Pete Jameson is COO of Osterhout Design Group which is a private self-funded company that is based in the centre of San Francisco – with a clean room close to the baseball stadium! The company’s main product is the R-7 glasses which are the result of ten years of development.
The glasses have the power of a tablet in a pair of 5oz glasses and no external components are needed. The glasses use a SnapDragon 805 processor and they have dual stereoscopic displays. Connectivity is via BT LE and 802.11ac. There are a range of sensors to track position. Dual microphones are fitted and the user interface sits on top of Android Kitkat. The product started to ship in January and we reported on it at CES. Jameson said that the company has “thousands” of back orders.
The company will have a new wide view display at AWE next week (and we’ll be there – Man. Ed.) The new display will have dual FullHD displays.
ODG is focused on enterprise and industrial applications and the firm is seeing traction around four use cases. Telepresence is a big requirement in all verticals. AR and assisted reality is a big demand for security, maintenance and installation use while 3D visualisation is popular and, finally, the market for HUDs is developing well. The company is working with BMW and has shown demos with the Mini Cooper.
Forester has said that 14 million users in the US may be using A/R glasses at work in the future.
Finally, Jameson showed how the glasses could be used by those that have become visually impaired as a result of macular degeration, for example, and sold under the NuEyes brand.
Analyst Comment
At the event, ODG had a prototype of the new glasses and the performance was very good. The prototype was quite heavy, but this was largely because the chassis was machined from aluminium and production products will be lighter. I was impressed. (BR)
