Posts Tagged ‘augmented reality’

Intel Is Cancelling Its Vaunt Smart Glasses

Written by Brooks Canavesi on June 13, 2018. Posted in IoT, Technology trends

In April, Intel has announced its plans to shut down the New Devices Group (NDG), which marks the end of its Vaunt smart glasses, which the company demonstrated in February.

The Vaunt smart glasses were part of Intel’s broader effort to diversify its product offering and expand to other markets. The New Devices Group (NDG), which was formed in 2013 to make fitness trackers and smart glasses, was hit with a major layoff in 2016. Back then, Intel denied that the company was stepping back from wearables, but Intel’s struggle to gain a foothold in the wearables market was evident.

Now, after an investment of several hundred million dollars by Intel, the company is no longer denying that its foray into the wearables market hasn’t panned out as expected.

“Intel is continuously working on new technologies and experiences. Not all of these develop into a product we choose to take to market. The Superlight [an internal name for Vaunt] project is a great example where Intel developed truly differentiated, consumer augmented reality glasses. We are going to take a disciplined approach as we keep inventing and exploring new technologies, which will sometimes require tough choices when market dynamics don’t support further investment,” an Intel spokesperson told CNBC in an email.

The end of the Vaunt smart glasses isn’t exactly a surprise. “Intel has a reputation for showing off ideas that never turn into real products. It comes up with a cool concept, proves out the technology, then hopes to convince others to take that idea and turn it into a real product,” wrote Verge executive editor Dieter Bohn in February.

Intel’s intention with the Vaunt smart glasses was to make them as discreet as possible. In a sense, they were supposed to be the answer to the tsunami of privacy worries that had swept the industry after the launch of the Google Glass. Even from a close distance, the Vaunt smart glasses looked just like any regular pair of prescription glasses with a plastic frame: no visible display, no chunky battery, no touch controls, and, most importantly, no camera.

Instead, the Vaunt smart glasses featured a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL), which is a semiconductor-based laser diode that emits a highly efficient optical beam vertically from its top surface. Intel used this very low-power laser to project a red, monochrome image with a resolution of 400 x 150 pixels onto a holographic reflector, which then reflected it directly onto the retina.

“We use a holographic grading embedded into the lens to reflect the correct wavelengths back to your eye. The image is called retinal projection, so the image is actually ‘painted’ into the back of your retina,” said Jerry Bautista, the lead for the team building wearable devices at Intel’s NDG. “We had to integrate very, very power-efficient light sources, MEMS devices for actually painting an image.”

Thanks to their innovative display technology and discreet looks, the Vaunt smart glasses were in a good position to become the first commercially successful smart glasses, and Intel even had a solid vision how to sell them to consumers.

”There’s something on the order of 2.5 billion people that require corrective lenses,” said Jerry Bautista. “They get their glasses from somewhere. Sixty percent of them come from eye care providers. … We would say these glasses belong in those kinds of channels. People are going to buy them like they buy their glasses today.”

Clearly, that plan didn’t pan out as intended, and Intel isn’t the only company in wearables that’s struggling to meet its goals. The wearable market would have actually shrunken in the fourth quarter of this year if it weren’t for Apple, whose shipments grew by 58 percent to 8 million devices, up from 5.1 million a year earlier, according to research firm International Data Corp. Fitbit’s shipments declined by 17 percent to 5.4 million in the quarter, and Xiaomi’s shipments fell by 5 percent to 4.9 million in the same quarter.

Despite the current state of the wearables market, the global wearables sales revenue is still projected to exceed 40 billion by 2021, compared to a little over 30 billion in 2018. According to a report in the FT, Amazon is working on building a pair of smart glasses to house its Alexa voice assistant, Google is focusing on helping professionals in manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare be more productive with its Glass Enterprise Edition, and Microsoft has demonstrated a number of real-world applications of its HoloLens headset. HoloLens however still carries a large price tag per unit and is painful to wear for over an hour which creates a barrier for industrial / enterprise applications.

It seems then that Intel’s failure simply indicates that smart glasses are not yet ready to leave the confines of factories, offices, and our homes. “The field of view, the quality of the display itself, it’s not there yet. We [Apple] don’t give a rat’s about being first. We want to be the best, and give people a great experience. But now anything you would see on the market any time soon would not be something any of us would be satisfied with. Nor do I think the vast majority of people would be satisfied,” said Apple’s CEO Tim Cook last year.

Focusing too much on the technology, this is something that Intel failed to see until the company could no longer afford to ignore the reality. Unfortunately, it appears we are still a few years out from that killer HUD that marries consumer price points, wearability, and functionality.

The State of Mobile VR and AR Headsets in 2018

Written by Brooks Canavesi on March 7, 2018. Posted in IoT

There was no shortage of VR- and AR-related news in 2017, from hardware releases to interesting technology developments to company acquisitions. According to Digi-Capital’s new Augmented/Virtual Reality Report Q1 2018, VR and AR are on their way to approach up to $90 and $15 billion revenue respectively within the next 5 years, reaching an install base in the high tens of millions to over 100 million by 2022 for the combined VR and AR headset market. To better understand the road ahead, as well as the groundwork the year 2017 laid for the future of VR and AR experience, we can examine the current state of mobile VR and AR headset, which represent the focal point of most consumers’ attention.

More Choice and Better Headsets

For a long time, consumers interested in VR and AR had very little choice how to experience the wonders of virtual worlds. There was either the basic Google Cardboardheadset, which, while interesting and affordable, also made VR look like a gimmick because of its flimsy nature and narrow field-of-view, or the three musketeers of VR: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR—all three of which cost several hundreds of dollars and require additional expensive hardware to work. There were also various AR apps for smartphones, such as the wildly popular mobile game for iOS and Android, Pokémon Go, with its location-based augmented gameplay elements. Pokémon Go was released in July 2016 and quickly became a viral hit, but no other AR game or app has since then managed to come even close how Pokémon Go was popular at the height of the global craze that followed its release. Even though many people have yet to get used to writing “2018” instead of “2017,” we’ve already seen several major hardware announcements from established players and newcomers alike.

HTC Vive Pro VR

On January 8, 2018, HTC announced an upgraded version of its HTC Vive headset, which debuted on April 5, 2016. The most notable improvement is the increase of the headset’s resolution by 78 percent, from 1080 x 1200 per eye to 1400 x 1600 per eye. The new resolution puts the HTC Vive Pro VR ahead of most competing headsets, including the Oculus Rift or Windows Mixed Reality headsets. Other improvements include a pair of high-fidelity headphones and a redesigned head strap that is supposed to make the headset feel less front-heavy and more stable. Also added are dual microphones and dual front-facing cameras, which allow game developers to experiment with new gameplay mechanics. The HTC Vive Pro VR keeps compatibility with both 1.0 and 2.0 SteamVR tracking. Together with the HTC Vive Pro VR, the company has also announced its own wireless adapter for both the original HTC Vive headset as well as the upgraded version. The adapter relies on Intel’s WiGig technology to transmit data over the 60 GHz band, avoiding issues with interference and low latency.

Oculus Go and Mi VR

2018 is shaping up to be a great year for mid-range VR headsets. At Qualcomm’s CES 2018 press conference, Facebook VR VP Hugo Barra shared news on the company’s $199 standalone headset, the Oculus Go, which is built by Xiaomi and features the same processor as the LG G6 and the original Google Pixel: the Snapdragon 821. Xiaomi will be selling a China-specific version of the Oculus Go headset, called Mi VR, but it seems that the two versions will have identical hardware specifications. Both the Oculus Go and the Mi VR would fill the gap between the $129 Gear VR, which is limited to Samsung devices, and the likes of the Oculus Rift and the PlayStation VR. Google and Lenovo have also announced a standalone VR headset to be released in 2018, the Mirage Solo, but it’s expected to be priced between $300 and $400, making it far too expensive for most people with a casual interest in VR.

Pimax 8K

All current virtual reality headsets could use a resolution boost, and that’s exactly what Chinese startup Pimax offers with its massive 8K VR headset. Built to support the mainstream content currently available in the market, the Pimax 8K features two 4K displays and boasts a field-of-view of 200 degrees while promising only 15 ms latency. “Pimax 8K is a cutting-edge virtual reality device designed for VR futurists. Our goal is to create an intuitive VR without the shade of the headset, and sharp enough that you won’t be disturbed by pixels,” states the company in its Kickstarter campaign, which has earned it over $4 million from almost 6,000 backers, which is more than even Oculus VR’s initial crowdfunding campaign. Pimax is also selling a smaller version of the same headset, with the 5K resolution. The company claims that 5K is enough to eliminate the screen door effect, which is the ability to see the fines lines that separate individual rows of pixels when wearing a VR headset or sitting too close to a monitor. Given how successful Pimax’s Kickstarter campaign was, it seems that there’s a huge market for high-resolution VR headsets. Even though we are still 20 years from ideal VR resolution, according to Jason Paul, the General Manager for VR Strategy at NVIDIA, the resolution of current popular VR headsets is high enough to make consumers interested in the technology, and 8K VR headsets such as the one from Pimax can go a long way in helping VR become mainstream.

Intel Vaunt Smart Glasses

By far the most interesting AR announcement so far, one with the potential to fill the massive hole left after the spectacular failure that was the Google Glass, came from Intel. The company has demonstrated a pair of smart glasses, called Vaunt, that don’t look like smart glasses at all, which is the most remarkable thing about them. Intel seems to understand that people won’t suddenly find it socially acceptable to wear a massive computer on the head just because we now have the technology that makes it possible to project tweets right in the center of the eyeball. Instead, Intel’s smart glasses actively try to display as little information as possible and contain as little technology as possible—no speaker, no microphone, and no camera. The glasses house a suite of electronics designed to power a very low-energy laser that shines a red, monochrome image with a resolution of 400 x 150 pixels onto a holographic reflector on the glasses’ right lens, and this image is then reflected directly onto the retina. “We had to integrate very, very power-efficient light sources, MEMS devices, for actually painting an image. We use a holographic grading embedded into the lens to reflect the correct wavelengths back to your eye. The image is called retinal projection, so the image is actually ‘painted’ into the back of your retina,” explained Jerry Bautista, the lead for the team building wearable devices at Intel’s NDG. Intel’s plan is to first allow developers to get their hands on the Vaunt smart glasses before shipping the glasses to consumers. The company hopes to create a thriving AR ecosystem and refine their hardware platform so that other hardware manufacturers could adopt it and improve upon it. If they succeed, AR could experience a renaissance.

Windows Mixed Reality

“The biggest advance was arguably Windows Mixed Reality: a VR platform built into Microsoft’s Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, supporting headsets that don’t need external cameras or markers,” wrote senior reporter at The Verge Adi Robertson. Windows Mixed Reality works with Windows Mixed Reality headsets, which were launched in cooperation with Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and other major hardware manufacturers. The headsets initially started at $399, but Microsoft has recently discounted many of them by 50 percent on Amazon, making its VR platform more accessible than ever. Also included in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update was the Mixed Reality Viewer. “By simply using the camera on your PC, you can see 3D objects mixed into your actual surroundings – people, places, things, or anything you can imagine,” Microsoft explained.

The Groundwork Has Been Laid; Content Needs to Follow

With the selection of VR and AR headsets being broader than ever, and with the support for VR and AR content being integrated directly into the Windows operating system, the only area where VR and AR need to catch up is the selection of interesting content users can enjoy. VR versions of popular PC and console titles such as Doom, Fallout 4, and Skyrim, have successfully demonstrated how immersive and extensive VR experiences can be, but they also felt like compromises held back by the current hardware and the limited experience of game developers. The good news for all fans of VR and AR is the fact that several companies with deep pockets are willing to bet on the success of this emerging market segment and finance the development of VR and AR apps and games to escape the supply and demand circle, where there is insufficient demand because there are not enough interesting products on offer.

Google ARCore: Augmented Reality for the Masses

Written by Brooks Canavesi on November 2, 2017. Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development, Technology trends

Unlike virtual reality, augmented reality has yet to capture the attention of the average consumer. Last year, the augmented reality market was valued at $2.39 billion, and it’s expected to reach $61.39 billion by 2023. Such a high growth-rate will only be possible if augmented reality comes to the masses, and Google has just announced a new software development kit for augmented reality that might do just that.

ARCore, as Google calls its rich set of tools, frameworks, and APIs, is built on the fundamental technologies that power Tango, the company’s original augmented reality computing platform, but it differs in one crucial way: it doesn’t need any additional hardware to function.

Takes More Than Two to Tango

Google released Tango in 2014, enabling certain smartphones to detect their position relative to the world around them without using GPS or other external signals. Right from the get-go, developers we able to create apps for the platform that integrated motion-tracking, area learning, and depth perception using Tango’s C and Java APIs to access this data in real time.

The main reason why we don’t hear about Tango just a few years after its launch is the terribly low number of smartphones that support it. On Tango’s official website, Google currently (September 2017) lists only two devices: the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro and the Asus ZenFone AR. The former is huge, and the latter doesn’t support FDD-LTE band 12. So, not exactly a great selection.

In the day and age of affordable Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Meizu, and Huawei releasing affordable smartphones with amazing specifications on a steady basis, the average consumer simply has too many other interesting options to even consider buying a specific smartphone just to try augmented reality. In 2017, augmented reality is still just an intriguing toy, not a major selling-point.

“We’ve been developing the fundamental technologies that power mobile AR over the last three years with Tango, and ARCore is built on that work. But, it works without any additional hardware, which means it can scale across the Android ecosystem,” said Dave Burke, Google’s vice-president for Android, in the release statement.

“ARCore will run on millions of devices, starting today with the Pixel and Samsung’s S8, running 7.0 Nougat and above. We’re targeting 100 million devices at the end of the preview. We’re working with manufacturers like Samsung, Huawei, LG, ASUS, and others to make this possible with a consistent bar for quality and high performance,” Burke added.

The goal here is to create a generic augmented reality platform that individual manufacturers can support as much or as little as they want. So far, the only known requirement is a minimum SDK version of Android 7.0 (Nougat). It’s possible that ARCore will, at least to some degree, run even on older versions of Android, but that’s something that still needs to be tested. From the point of view of Android developers, ARCode will be yet another functionality they can use to enrich their apps.

ARCore Versus Other Augmented Reality Platforms

Google is slightly late to the augmented reality party. Apple introduced its augmented reality platform, ARKit, back in June, and third-party developers have already used it to produce a host of clever experiments that anyone with an Apple device with either the A9 or the A10 (or newer) processor can try.

In April, at this year’s F8 keynote, Facebook introduced the company’s augmented reality platform, which focuses on artificial intelligence-powered cameras. “We’re making the camera the first augmented reality platform,” said Zuckerberg.

With so much competition and such high stakes, ARCore needs to give developers exceptional tools and flawless performance to avoid the fate of Tango. On this front, Google focuses on three things: motion tracking, environmental understanding, and light estimation.

Using the combination of Java/OpenGL, Unity, and Unreal, developers can use ARCore to determine both the position and orientation of the phone as it moves to keep virtual objects accurately placed in the real environment. The same points that ARCore uses for motion tracking are also used to keep objects accurately placed on horizontal surfaces, such as a floor or a table. Finally, “ARCore observes the ambient light in the environment and makes it possible for developers to light virtual objects in ways that match their surroundings, making their appearance even more realistic,” explains Burke.

To further support augmented reality development, Google developed Blocks and Tilt Brush. Blocks is a simple 3D modeling tool designed to make creating 3D models as accessible as possible. Artists can share their creations with others and easily use them for their own projects. Tilt Brush is a virtual reality painting application with an intuitive interface. Together with Blocks, Tilt Brush gives developers everything they need to create beautiful assets in a natural and fun way.

“We think the Web will be a critical component of the future of AR, so we’re also releasing prototype browsers for web developers so they can start experimenting with AR, too. These custom browsers allow developers to create AR-enhanced websites and run them on both Android/ARCore and iOS/ARKit,” said Burke.

Search is one area where augmented reality could prove to be tremendously useful, which is a big deal considering that Google is essentially synonymous with search in general. With the help of artificial intelligence, Google could one day be able to overlay assembly instructions on Ikea products, take recipes to a whole new level, or shatter language barriers.

ARCore success now depends on how well the technology will work in practice. Unlike with the company’s previous augmented reality platform or Apple’s ARKit, most Android users will experience ARCore through budget and mid-range devices, with lower resolution cameras and weaker CPUs. Unless ARCore works acceptably well outside the high-end smartphone category, most Android users won’t be interested in new augmented reality apps, and developers thus won’t be interested in making them.