DigiLens Is Making Strides in Extending Reality and Augmenting Life in 2022
Why is extended reality (XR) a necessity in the lite-industrial market?
Why is extended reality (XR) a necessity in the lite-industrial market? At Augmented World Expo (AWE) 2022, DigiLens’ VP & GM Product Business Unit Nima Shams described how DigiLens’ best-in-class optics will help deliver boosts in productivity: “After 15 years of tenacious, innovative work, our core technology leads the industry in quality and cost, and we continue to evolve to meet the demands of the future in the lite-industrial market.”
“After 15 years of tenacious, innovative work, our core technology leads the industry in quality and cost, and we continue to evolve to meet the demands of the future in the lite-industrial market.”
Nima Shams,VP & GM Product Business Unit, DigiLens
XR will shape the future of work and drive the productivity boost we desperately need. In 2022, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the efficiency of the workforce was declining. Labor productivity only increased 0.7%, output increased 5.7%, but hours worked increased 5.1%. We hit a productivity plateau where everyone was working hard but not efficiently. “As we’ve seen in other plateaus throughout history, technology and industry will take us to the next level,” Shams said. In 2017, the Harvard Business Review released a study that showed XR increased productivity in the enterprise market. The overall time savings was 25% and in some cases like Boeing, trainees completed work in 35% less time. So why has it not been widely deployed or adopted since then?
There have been two camps in the pendulum swing of XR products from 2013 to 2021 – ‘form factor dominates all’ versus ‘functionality is king.’ “These products weren’t necessarily successful in the consumer market, so they pivoted to the enterprise market. But even with the pivots, there were a lot of challenges that they weren’t able to address because of the original design for the consumer market,” Shams said. When making an enterprise product, it is important to understand what the use case is, and then work back to the technology. In addition, the so-called “pioneer” products with core technology have been very expensive and not scalable.
Among the current hardware options in XR, there are products for heavy industry and visual/virtual. “In heavy industry there is the Realware Navigator 500, purposefully built for heavy industrial-grade use, with a great camera and voice command. It wasn’t designed to track where you are in the world or for AR (the display is secondary), so it isn’t a good fit for enterprise use. In the visual/virtual space, Magic Leap 2 has a large FOV, amazing tracking and display segmentation. But it is not an enterprise product because the see through is only 22% or less, it includes three devices connected by a wire, and the peripheral vision is obstructed,” said Shams.
“DigiLens believes XR, not VR, will win the day.”
Chris Pickett, CEO, DigiLens
While much of today’s conversation about next-generation display technology revolves around the metaverse and VR, “DigiLens believes XR, not VR, will win the day,” according to Chris Pickett, DigiLens’ CEO. “VR offers primarily an artificial experience…The cameras and screen tech required for this approach cause lag and distortion and use very large form factors that limit peripheral view. On the other hand, see-through XR is real XR because you see the real world undistorted by optics or screen technology in real-time.”
Between form factor and functionality lives the majority of enterprise and industrial needs, but this is also where there is a huge gap in the market. In the space between the current heavy industry and visual/virtual products, there is also a huge gap in the market where the majority of enterprise and industrial needs are. “DigiLens is answering that need with an enterprise product that features binocular display, high brightness, high see-through, unobstructed peripheral vision, all-in-one, industrial grade, and purpose-built for these markets. With DigiLens, the key difference is that we can build our product from the ground up to meet the needs of the end user, while being sustainable at a cost-effective price point that will bring a major ROI,” said Shams.
DigiLens’ core optical technology and its ability to deliver socially acceptable glasses at a reasonable price point make us the leader in this exciting and competitive space. “There is no other waveguide technology that will be truly ready to be deployed at scale over the next five years. We have the best waveguides and our display is full-color, 85% transparent, scalable, cost-effective, efficient, and works indoors and outdoors. We built our own LCOS-LED driven platform light engine that drives our waveguides and it is less than 2.5cc, polarized light at 5 lumens. For the compute aspect, DigiLens built an all-in-one device with Qualcomm XR2 SoC – the world’s first!” said Shams. In our CES 2022 press release, we revealed best-in-class XR advances, including the next-generation Crystal30 Waveguide and the new EnLiten30 Projector.
As Shams described in his presentation, “DigiLens makes the best tires in the world, but the world hasn’t seen the car yet. We want to create gravity towards this product…and push the industry forward. We want to show the market what the art of the possible is.” We will empower others to be successful with our waveguide and core technology, but at the same time we see a significant opening in the market and we will try to address that with the right product. Come build the next mobile computing platform and help us create that future.
About DigiLens
DigiLens, maker of ARGO, is a leader in holographic waveguides used for XR displays. The company has developed a patented optical platform and photopolymer technology that delivers best-in-class solutions using a unique, low-cost contact-copy manufacturing process. DigiLens enables OEM partners to design and build XR-enabled devices for the global automobile, enterprise, consumer, avionics, and military industries. Based in Sunnyvale, CA, DigiLens investors include industry leaders like Samsung Electronics, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Diamond Edge Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corporation, Alsop Louie Partners, Optimas Capital Management, 37 Interactive Entertainment, UDC Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Universal Display Corporation, Niantic, Inc., Sony Innovation Fund, Dolby Family Ventures, Continental AG, and more.
Disclaimer
All product specifications are subject to change to improve reliability, function, or design.