AI era competition began, the company how to find the correct direction of AR glasses?

Summary
AR glasses quietly growing industry, is usher in a new round of opportunities.

In July 2017, Google Glass, a long-awaited company, was once again re-established. This time it put aside the former geeks, choosing to focus on the corporate market, and was quietly praised by partners such as GE and Boeing. Just two months before the news, the same vision of the B-side market of AR glasses platform won the Blu-ray venture led by the B round of financing, and has long been with Huawei, Bureau Veritas and many other The establishment of cooperation between companies, invariably the action behind the AR glasses usher in a new wave of development opportunities.

"Everyone hopes for something like Iron Man, but the AR glasses industry has to step by step." Wu Fei, founder of Bright Vision, put forward several major issues to be solved by AR glasses at Wuzhen in December this year.

"The first is the hardware, which needs to be taken by the people. It must be very light. Second, there must be standard technical solutions for optics. The third is computing. Front-end computing is important. It should not only react quickly but also be precise."

Bright vision CEO Wu Fei

These three elements, just to confirm the reason Google Glass failed, Google Developers Conference debut in 2012, Google Glass has placed many expectations, but several hardware-to-software flaws, let The product failed quickly and the mistake it made was:

Hardware based poor, less than one hour of battery life, power consumption at the same time the larger body heat, the network infrastructure is not good enough, with the body weight of nearly 50g, inconvenient for people to carry;

Software services, lack of adequate ecological support, positioning is not clear, resulting in poor practicality after the user purchase, in addition it also raised public concerns about privacy.

Most importantly, the $ 1,500 Google Glass pricing was not attractive to the average consumer. Under the circumstances, the AR smart glasses were bound to be limited by various factors and eventually reduced to geeks. And when drawing on the experience of the giant, firmly locked B-market and achieved phased results, bright vision is how to treat AR glasses industry opportunities? Where to go next? With these questions, Geek Park made an interview with Wu Fei, the founder of Bright Vision, to hear him talk about the present and future of AR glasses.

The factory's "glimpse of the future"

In the view of Wu Fei, the industry was looking for AR glasses opportunities, once due to immature technology problems are now being solved step by step, and this is an important time to think about the direction of the product.

"When we first started, we had only one goal and let the users wear it." Wu Fei said this is a minimum requirement because no matter what the user does, they all hope to achieve a feeling of comfort It is hard to do this. The team worked hard to keep the weight at 33.6g and dispensed with the glass lens, a design the user considered unnecessary, which established the basis for everyday wear.

After reducing the weight, how to configure the network? How to extend battery life? After thinking, the team chose to solve the problem through the split. Such a roundabout not only failed to compromise the product, but achieved unexpected results. "Connecting the battery life can reach about 6 hours, and the opportunity to use the mobile phone in the future. force". Including the product optical technology, including material structure, bright field of vision has also chosen to set up joint lab with Zhejiang University such programs as a basis.

GLXSS Pro

Ultimately, this is called GLXSS Pro AR glasses, with a 13 million pixel camera, 21 degree angle of view. Equipped with electronic image stabilization, and a resolution of 640 × 400 LED display. Talk through dual microphone noise reduction and speaker design. In the current industry, to achieve these while ensuring glasses weight 33.6g is not easy. Superimposed together all kinds of factors, constitute the GL platform GLXSS Live glasses.

What is the uniqueness of AR glasses? In Wu Fei's opinion, the answer to this question is the future direction of the platform. Before setting up a bright vision, Wu Fei had more than a decade of factory management experience and served as the factory's director of global automation, which made him keenly aware of the pain points of the world's top 500.

"How companies measure a new technology? Foxconn, for example, why it joined the automation behind the calculation is very simple, compared with the number of users to use automation, plus these people make mistakes in the cost and equipment costs to compare, this is a Another measure of whether new equipment can bring about a new capability and solve problems in a wider area ? "

AR glasses platform is an important way for businesses to bring new capabilities, but also to help companies save the cost of technical means. Bright vision and Huawei enterprises such cooperation, it is the result of mutual solutions to meet the needs of both parties.

Bright vision and eView cooperation with Huawei project

"The eView smart equipment project we are partnering with Huawei is designed to connect a large number of devices at Huawei's three Global Service Capability Sharing Centers in Asia / Europe / North America with front-end smart glasses for direct engagement and remote consultation. In front of the problem, you can also call and share the picture perspective in a key way, which not only improves the overall efficiency but also helps them to complete the accumulation of knowledge base. "

Through the cooperation, bright vision accumulated is the practical experience of different clients. Currently carried out with the car repair, maintenance of high-speed rail, large equipment maintenance and many other industries cooperation.

This cooperation is also confirmed on Google Glass. Google Glass, the enterprise edition, meets the expectations of the business after hardware upgrades, improved battery life and pixels, reduced heat and weight. GE was the first company to use Google Glass, where workers wore glasses to share first-line work content without stopping their hands and calling features reduced the error rate of assembly and troubleshooting by up to 8% 12%, industrial giants using AR glasses are opening a new door.

AR glasses platform for the industry to bring the most direct changes, no doubt to improve efficiency, save costs and achieve remote assistance, but the future use of the scene even more Aspect. Wu Fei believes that the platform built by AR glasses is the foundation of the future factory. With the further development of technology and the popularization of the Internet of Things, one day a unified connection will be formed among people, people, and devices in the factory, and between devices and devices , AR eyewear platform will have the predictive operation and maintenance capabilities to help these industries on-site automation (field automation is part of the predictive O & M) AI era before the outbreak, we now see, but the AR eyewear industry, glance".

"Finding the cloud" found just need

The field of AR glasses has long been understood as a big player competition. With the participation of giants such as Google Glass and HoloLens, people naturally imagine AR glasses as an all-powerful "future weapon." However, in Wu Fei's view, there are two lines of competition for AR glasses in the industry. Equipment that emphasizes "eco-comprehensive" equipment and "business specialization" each have different strategies:

"Big business can draw a big circle for the first time, but the pressure is very low and it may not be fully satisfied at every point, but you can find big opportunities that you might not wear if it does every single point 5 hours but can wear at least 5 minutes, this is a way of thinking.

Another way of thinking is, I hope you put it on the first day as a tool you can not do without, your business will escalate, it is also slowly growing, we are drawing a very large pressure on a small round, and then Round grow. Large ecological players and small ecological players in the market will have demand, this is not a zero-sum game, we learn from each other, and finally bring the market bigger. "

More specifically, devices such as HoloLens are tough, but the difficulty is wearing comfort, the more complex calculations that come with it, and the pitfalls that make it harder to pinpoint. Wu Fei think bright vision just can increase their own "pressure" by their own characteristics, so combined with AI technology can serve more scenes.

"Security is a very good scenario for smart glasses, before the idea is to establish a fixed camera, or to rely on people to take an ID card to check, is entirely by the human screening. Now we have a complete solution to our glasses Which includes AI chips, which can identify faces, objects, license plates and so on in real time so that checkpoints can quickly check people's cars. "

Independent research and development of AI technology

Different from the industrial field, the difficulty of security lies in not only letting people see but also checking . To this end they use the Intel VPU architecture (Myriad X Vision Processing Unit), through the bottom of the adjustment, access to relevant databases, training forensic contrast ability. All this because of the platform has a higher phase: "One is the equipment is relatively light, you can overcome the move; the other is the corresponding machine learning training can be accurate, after the actual use, you caught a lot of energy before Fugitives. "

In addition, the combination of medical scene and AR glasses is also cause for concern. Bright vision Early exploration of the "surgical teaching" direction.

"Surgeons wear glasses to share their first perspective and carry out difficult case operation. Students can learn the surgical knowledge directly and indirectly."

Use AR glasses teaching guide

This approach not only teaching better, but also precipitation first-hand information, enrich the knowledge base. Earlier, Google Glass and Dignity Health doctors also established a cooperation, doctors can use glasses voice recognition to call records, and can provide doctors with patient records, although the usage is different, but there is no doubt that when AR glasses combined with medical Scene, it has a richer purpose.

In Wu Fei's opinion, both the medical field and the field of security, the expansion of AR glasses is attempted on the eve of the first-angle interaction eruption. After initially trying out the different directions and seeing the results, he assured AI technology has a greater impact on the AR glasses industry: "Everyone is observing how the technology of the first-angle interaction will develop, what kind of products will be taken and what will we take Business model, AI will do anything, all of this, you only have to enter this scene you can know. "He has no doubt that AR glasses have become Iron Man the day, and now, bright vision to do is to let These areas of expertise are more efficient. Bright vision of a new generation of products will be on display at CES this year.