#AWE2014
AWE Recap: Lots of money in AR & VR – funding news & forecasts

AWE Recap: Lots of money in AR & VR – funding news & forecasts

The AWE recap is back. We look back at the biggest news in augmented and virtual reality to keep you in the loop. Augmented Reality Magic Leap gains ex-Samsung Executive: AR company, Magic Leap, which has funding from the likes of Google, has hired Yannick Pellet, a top executive from Samsung, as senior vice president of software engineering. Previously he was vice president, advanced software platform at Samsung Research America. InfinityAR raises $5M in Series B: InfinityAR has raised $5 million dollars in series B funds from Japan’s SUN Corporation, New Zealand private investment fund Singulariteam Fund II and US-based fund Platinum Partners Value Aritrage Fund L.P. The funding and new strategic partnership with SUN Corporation will help InfinityAR break into the Japanese market. Atheer’s new Operations and Communications Console brings a sophisticated new level of communications to AiR Smart Glasses, enabling enterprises to manage and oversee communications with their deskless workforce from anywhere. Atheer update brings communications console and Unity Integration: AR smartglass pioneer, Atheer, released an update to its Atheer AiR OS bringing with it anew Operations and Communications Console which enables enterprises to manage and oversee communications with their deskless workforce from anywhere. In addition, the update brings with it Atheer a plug-in for the Unity 3D Engine. Virtual Reality Wearality Sky wants to be your cheap entry-level VR device: A new smartphone-powered VR headset has hit Kickstarter this week offering its VR solution to early backers for as little as $49 with a delivery date of October of this year. WearVR App Store raises $1.5M: Virtual Reality app store, WearVR has raised $1.5 million dollars from aa group of Atlanta-based investors. The money will be used to help the app store expand and improve its offerings including launching an app to help users find VR software. Augmented and Virtual Reality To Hit $150 Billion, Disrupting Mobile By 2020: Digi-Capital has released a new report outlining the future of AR and VR over the next few years until 2020,. In it, the company forecasts that AR/VR could hit $150 billion revenue by 2020, with AR taking the lion’s share around $120 billion and VR at $30 billion. Augmented World Expo (AWE) is the world’s largest conference for professionals focused on making the world more interactive – featuring technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Wearable Computing, Smart Glasses, Gesture and Sensors devices, and The Internet of Things. Now in our sixth year, AWE 2015 is our biggest event yet with over 3,000 tech professionals, 200 demos, 100+ AWE-inspiring talks and over 150 participating companies. Tickets are on sale now....

If you jump on a virtual couch does it hurt? Looking back at 2014 Auggie Best Campaign winner

If you jump on a virtual couch does it hurt? Looking back at 2014 Auggie Best Campaign winner

With the sixth annual Auggie Awards kicked off this week, we thought it was a great time to take a look back at some of our previous winners while nominations are being submitted. This first one couldn’t help but make us smile, especially the whimsical video which sees people jumping on virtual couches and picking up virtual furniture as if with superhero strength. Last year, augmented reality software leader, Metaio, took home Best Campaign for its work in bringing the 2014 Ikea catalogue to life. Using AR, Metaio gave Ikea catalogue readers the ability to place virtual furniture in their own homes to visualize the pieces before purchase. The campaign used the physical printed catalogue as an AR marker. Users would set the catalogue in their room where they wanted to see a piece of furniture and then viewed their room through a smartphone or tablet to see how it looked. The campaign is a creative way to enhance the value of the popular print catalogue from the furniture maker by turning it into a practical tool to help readers better visualize products in their home. The team at Ikea had some fun with the app in this marketing spot (below) which sees a family having some fun with the ability to manifest virtual couches and chairs on command. Metaio is a sponsor at this year’s AWE event and can also be found in the Exhibitor area so be sure to stop by and talk to them. Metaio’s CEO, Thomas Alt, will also be speaking on “Devices are About to Open Their Eyes, and It’s Going to Change Mobile Forever”. Think you have what it takes to be one of the BEST in the 2015 Auggie Awards? Head on over to our submission form to get started.   Augmented World Expo (AWE) is the world’s largest conference for professionals focused on making the world more interactive – featuring technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Wearable Computing, Smart Glasses, Gesture and Sensors devices, and The Internet of Things. Now in our sixth year, AWE 2015 is our biggest event yet with over 3,000 tech professionals, 200 demos, 100+ AWE-inspiring talks and over 150 participating companies. Tickets are on sale now.  ...

2015 Auggie Awards gets new Sci-Fi category to bring “Sight” to life

2015 Auggie Awards gets new Sci-Fi category to bring “Sight” to life

The Auggies are back! Every year, the best of the best in the Augmented World compete for a one-of-a-kind Auggie Trophy to celebrate excellence in augmented reality.  This year’s awards have ten categories including best smart glasses, best app and best marketing campaign. New to the awards program this year is a challenge created in partnership with IEEE to find the Best Sci-Fi to Reality application. The Best Sci-Fi to Reality IEEE Challenge will accept nominations that implement design concepts depicted in a Sci-Fi Film. This year’s challenge film is “Sight” (winner of 2013 Auggie Awards). Sight is a short futuristic film by Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo. The film presents a time beyond smart glasses when users upgrade their sight with AR-capabilities provided by a tech giant called Sight Systems. In the film, we see a day in the life of the main character, as he gamifies making dinner by turning the chopping of a cucumber into a competition and turns the walls of his home into a large screen with feeds and virtual art. The film goes on to show our hero on a date where he uses a dating app called Wingman to help him gauge how interested his date is and coach him on what he should say and order to get her “adoration” level to a more appropriate stage. The goal of the Sci-Fi to Reality award is to implement one or more of the following scenes from the film and bring it to life. Each scene has a certain number of points based on difficulty. Opening Titles – 1 point Flying Game – 3 points Refrigerator food status – 3 points Cucumber slicing game – 3 points Cook an egg game – 5 points Walls of information – 1 point Virtual fitting room – 3 points Star constellation recognition – 3 points Menu ordering – 3 points Vocal/face emotion detection – 10 points Animated Van Gogh painting – 5 points Sadly, there will be no points for the Wingman app. As this is the IEEE challenge at AWE 2015 – extra points will be awarded to openness and interoperability. A judging panel will award points to each nominee based on how similar the implementation is to the Sight film and how well it really works in reality. Bonus points from IEEE goes to an implementation that promotes openness and interoperability. Check the full Sight film belowt to get inspired! We can’t wait to see you bring this to life. Nominations are now open so when you are ready, head on over here to submit your Sci-Fi to Reality project. Sight from Robot Genius on Vimeo.   Augmented World Expo (AWE) is the world’s largest conference for professionals focused on making the world more interactive – featuring technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Wearable Computing, Smart Glasses, Gesture and Sensors devices, and The Internet of Things. Now in our sixth year, AWE 2015 is our biggest event yet with over 3,000 tech professionals, 200 demos, 100+ AWE-inspiring talks and over 150 participating companies. Tickets are on sale now....

Dyson Electronics Lead and Baidu Institute Scientist headline 2015 Embedded Vision Summit

AWE partner Embedded Vision Alliance is on a mission to inspire and empower hardware and software product creators to use computer vision technology. Computer vision enables the creation of systems and applications that “see and understand.” As part of this mission the Alliance hosts an Embedded Vision Summit. Embedded is a one-day event featuring presentations by industry luminaries, bringing insights into innovative approaches to computer vision. Headlining this year’s Summit is Mike Aldred, Electronics Lead at Dyson and Ren Wu a distinguished scientist at the Baidu Institute of Deep Learning. Aldred has developed software for Dyson’s first bladeless fan, the AMO1, and has managed Dyson’s Electronics Research Group as well, but his main focus has always been to ensure that Dyson produces a world-beating robotic vacuum cleaner. He will talk about his experience in developing a vision-enabled consumer product in his keynote presentation on “Bringing Computer Vision to the Consumer.” Ren leads the effort at Baidu to expand the frontier of deep learning and artificial intelligence via high-performance heterogeneous computing. His latest work, Deep Image, powered by a custom-designed supercomputer dedicated to deep learning and highly optimized for convolutional neural networks, has achieved state-of-the-art performance on image recognition tasks. His dream is to make AI omnipotent and omnipresent. At the 2015 Embedded Vision Summit, Ren will speak on “Enabling Ubiquitous Visual Intelligence Through Deep Learning.” The AWE community is invited to attend the 2015 Embedded Vision Summit on May 12 in Santa Clara, California. AWE community members may use the discount code, “EVS154AWE,” for 20% off the full Summit registration or 50% off the Showcase-only registration. Go to http://www.embeddedvisionsummit.com for more information and to register. The Embedded Vision Summit is a full day of “how-to” presentations, product and technology demos, and insightful talks by industry leaders in one of the hottest areas of innovation today—computer vision. This year’s Summit has three conference tracks, including a new one focused on market trends and business opportunities. The Technology Showcase will feature dozens of demos of computer vision applications. The Embedded Vision Summit will: Inspire you to create new products that use computer vision technology Offer practical how-tos to help you incorporate vision capabilities into your designs Provide opportunities to meet and talk with leading computer vision technology suppliers and technologists, and see exciting demos of some of the latest technology Register today at http://www.embeddedvisionsummit.com. Augmented World Expo (AWE) is the world’s largest conference for professionals focused on making the world more interactive – featuring technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Wearable Computing, Smart Glasses, Gesture and Sensors devices, and The Internet of Things. Now in our sixth year, AWE 2015 is our biggest event yet with over 3,000 tech professionals, 200 demos, 100+ AWE-inspiring talks and over 150 participating companies. Tickets are on sale now....

AWE Recap: AR mobile app market set to explode and VR apps help you chill out

AWE Recap: AR mobile app market set to explode and VR apps help you chill out

We live in an AWE-inspiring time where the digital is blurring with the physical through augmented and virtual reality. These spaces are moving fast and it can be hard to keep up with what’s going on. Don’t worry we’ve got you covered! Here’s what you missed this week in AR, VR, and wearables in our AWE Recap. Augmented Reality AR Mobile game market set to explode thanks to smart glasses: A new report from Juniper show AR apps are on the rise. The report forecasts that the AR mobile games market will generate 420 million downloads annually by 2019, up from 30 million in 2014. The jump is mostly attributed to the emergence of smart glasses like Hololens. The report also highlighted the growing interest from enterprise in AR solutions. Sony has officially entered the AR smart glasses market: The Sony SmartEyeglass which was unveiled earlier this year by the company went on sale this week in 10 countries including Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, UK, and the US. The SED-E1 or Developer Edition of EyeGlass can be purchased for $840. AR Apple Watch app lets you put Apple’s first wearable now: A new AR-app by Belgian IT company Underside have launched an app called ARWatch which allows users to see the Apple Watch on their wrists virtually well before the April 10 in-store preview. Pristine and Epson Collaborate to Bring Moverio to Field Services: Smart glasses enterprise solution provider, Pristine, have joined forces with Epson to bring it’s EyeSight platform to Epson’s AR glasses Moverio as part of the Moverio Developer program. The partnership will enable organizations of any size to solve complex business problems using first-person, hands-free remote collaboration solutions Smart glasses to reach 1 billion shipments between 2019-2023: AugmentedReality.org’s smart glasses report forecast that this year we will see approximately 1 million smart glasses ship while this number will increase dramatically to over 10 million by 2018. Virtual Reality VR simulation teaches cops when to shoot: VR isn’t alway about fun and games. A virtual reality application designed by a company called VirTra is being used by Morris County Public Safety Training Academy in Morristown, New Jersey to train its cops on when to shoot based on immersive simulations in VR. Steven Spielberg to direct “Ready Player One”: Get excited! Spielberg is coming back to Warner Brothers to direct the film adaptation of Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One”, a novel set in 2044 which depicts a VR-centric dystopic future. Suffer from Anxiety Attacks? VR might be the answer: A new VR game is helping those suffering from anxiety calm down by placing them in the bottom of the sea. Deep is a VR game for Oculus created by Owen Harris. The game uses deep breathing exercises and immersive visuals and sound to help users calm down. Augmented World Expo (AWE) is the world’s largest conference for professionals focused on making the world more interactive – featuring technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Wearable Computing, Smart Glasses, Gesture and Sensors devices, and The Internet of Things. Now in our sixth year, AWE 2015 is our biggest event yet with over 3,000 tech professionals, 200 demos, 100+ AWE-inspiring talks and over 150 participating companies. Tickets are on sale now....

Sci-Fi Friday: Meet Lumo, the Interactive Projector

Sci-Fi Friday: Meet Lumo, the Interactive Projector

Welcome to Sci-Fi Fridays, a new weekly blog series from AWE which features emerging technology that feels like it is coming straight out of the movies. This week’s find is an interactive projector called Lumo. Remember when your floor was made of lava? Or when you spent hours exploring magical forests filled with imaginary creatures in your room? Well Lumo takes this imaginary game play to a whole new level by turning the real world into a magical playground for children. It does this by creating an interactive surface that’s big enough to transform any room into an interactive play space. Lumo is a motion-reactive projector which creates a 6’ x 4’ interactive surface which reacts to jumping, kicking, stomping, moving, and waving arms. Lumo is busy building games and experiences for the projector and intends to launch with over a 100 to choose from with the help of the developer community. Lumo will also come with a content creation tool which will equip kids and users to create their own unique experiences to work with the projector. Lumo Play is currently raising $80,000 on Indiegogo for its interactive projector and at the time of writing is already more than half way there with 20 days left on the clock. Early bird backers can grab a projector for $499 USD. Lumo Play CEO, Megthan Athavale, is speaking at this year’s AWE and the Lumo interactive projector will be active on the exhibitor floor to experience the wonder in person. Augmented World Expo (AWE) is the world’s largest conference for professionals focused on making the world more interactive – featuring technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Wearable Computing, Smart Glasses, Gesture and Sensors devices, and The Internet of Things. Now in our sixth year, AWE 2015 is our biggest event yet with over 3,000 tech professionals, 200 demos, 100+ AWE-inspiring talks and over 150 participating companies. Tickets are on sale now....

Project Tango Lead Johnny Lee Added as Keynote Speaker at AWE 2015

Project Tango Lead Johnny Lee Added as Keynote Speaker at AWE 2015

Google’s Project Tango is set to change computer vision and robotics by concentrating this technology into a mobile device. The Google team is developing smartphones and tablets that can track 3D motion and create 3D models of the environment around it allowing you to map the world around you in real-time. In doing so, Tango unlocks some unique opportunities in directions, dimensions and environmental maps as well as the creation of immersive augmented reality experiences that merge the digital and the physical world. Johnny Lee is leading Project Tango and we are excited to announce that he has been added as a keynote speaker to the Augmented World Expo speaker lineup. Lee will be present some of the underlying technologies that are making Project Tango possible such as hardware sensors and software algorithms. Lee’s keynote will also include demonstrations of the current state of Tango and will speak to the role of 3D sensing in mobile gaming, indoor navigation, virtual reality, augmented reality, and autonomous drones. Before Project Tango, Lee helped Google X explore new projects as Rapid Evaluator and was a core algorithms contributor to the original Xbox Kinect. His YouTube videos demonstrating Wii remote hacks have surpassed over 15 million views and became one of the most popular TED talk videos. In 2008, he received his PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University and has been recognized in MIT Technology Review’s TR35. Augmented World Expo (AWE) is the world’s largest conference for professionals focused on making the world more interactive – featuring technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Wearable Computing, Smart Glasses, Gesture and Sensors devices, and The Internet of Things. Now in our sixth year, AWE 2015 is our biggest event yet with over 3,000 tech professionals, 200 demos, 100+ AWE-inspiring talks and over 150 participating companies. Tickets are on sale now....

This Year’s AWE is BIG, Still Time to Save BIG to get there!

This Year’s AWE is BIG, Still Time to Save BIG to get there!

Early bird tickets end March 30 Last week we revealed an initial list of speakers and sessions set to make AWE 2015 our biggest one yet. AWE 2015 is poised to set a new record with over 3000 CEOs, CTOs, designers, developers, creative agencies, futurists, analysts, investors, and high-level press all gathering for three days June 8-10 at the Santa Clara Convention Center and we can’t wait for you to be part of it! This year AWE includes keynotes by industry luminaries, classes and tutorials, more than 200 products and startup demos, the largest collection of industry use cases, the Auggie Award Competition, the Art Gala and reception, talks by 200 industry leaders covering business, technology and design, and 33,000 square feet of exhibit space. Our headliners are pioneers and visionaries in the AR and VR space including Tom Furness, the godfather of augmented and virtual reality; David Brin, as scientist and award-winning author and the father of Wearable Computing, Steve Mann. And on stage and in the exhibitor area you can expect to find over a dozen smart glass manufacturers including EPSON, OPTINVENT, META, VUZIX, ATHEER, SEEBRIGHT, GLASSUP, ODG, IMMY, ARA, DAQRI, INNOVEGA. Here’s just a taste of what to expect at AWE 2015: Epic talks from additional industry luminaries including Jay Wright (VP, Qualcomm), Mark Billinghurst (Director HIT Lab NZ), Steven Feiner (Professor, Columbia University) and Chris Stapleton (Simyosis) Micro-talks by top innovators about new products and a collection of industry use cases demonstrating the value of AR, VR, wearables and IoT in a variety of verticals Case studies showing how AR is creating actual business value in a variety of vertical applications including advertising, retail, sales, real estate, architecture, urban design, healthcare, education, art and culture Automotive and Aerospace use cases including car design and HUDs from Honda and Jaguar Land Rover and more Panels on topics including Authoring Reality, VR in advertising, privacy and security and building an industry roadmap Check out the full list of initial speakers and sessions on our website here It’s not too late to save BIG on tickets to this year’s event. Early bird tickets are on sale until March 30. Save 40% on a 3-day full access ticket or grab an exhibitor pass for only $49. Groups of 5-9 people are eligible for 20% discount on top of existing discounts. Grab your early bird tickets today. Oh and be sure to mark your calendars with these important dates! March 30: Early bird tickets end & full agenda published April 6: Auggie Awards submission starts April 30: Secure your seats and book your travel & Auggie Awards public voting starts May 8: Download the app & create your schedule June 8-10: AWE event in progress  ...

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