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5 Takeaways From This Year’s Augmented World Expo
04:33 PM | June 06, 2022
As the “metaverse” slowly transitions from a buzzword to reality, the Augmented World Expo—a gathering of augmented reality CEOs, engineers, creators, consumers and investors—showcased what the future of the industry might look like.
Since its first event in 2010, AWE has grown to over 250 augmented and virtual reality companies from around the globe. The 2022 conference, which ran from June 1-3 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in the Bay Area, was the biggest yet—and flush with new experimental formats and new technology.
One example of the conference's new approach: a three-act augmented reality play performed at the conference called “MetaTr@versal: A Day in the Life.” Written by extended-reality (XR) technologist Sophia Moshasha, the play used VR screen mirroring to tell the story of an entrepreneur pitching new interoperability standards to investors.
“It was super ambitious, because we were using technologies from ARWall,” said AWE Head of Operations Andrea Lowery. “I can't even characterize all the different audio visual inputs and time and energy and creativity and tech that went into this thing.”
This year’s AWE featured keynotes, breakout rooms and a tech playground that included interactive and immersive experiences. Here are the five standouts from the conference and the advancing technology.
Magic Leap’s New Headset
Lines began snaking around the corner of the Magic Leap booth before the exposition floor even officially opened, as crowds gathered to try the Florida-based company’s new Magic Leap 2 augmented reality headset.
Participants were paired up and assigned to one of three demos. I was able to try the “wildfire” demo, where the glasses scanned a printed code on a circular tabletop and displayed a topographical map. The demonstrator toggled overlays off and on, showing the spread of weather and fire across the landscape. The company hopes their technology will be used in the future to train first responders, as well as workers in manufacturing, health and defense, among other industries.
The new headset aims to tackle some of the problems with the release of its first incarnation—including a narrow field of view and limited range of applications—by expanding the horizontal field of vision from 50 to 70 degrees and reaching out to more potential partners.
The most impressive part of the Magic Leap 2 was optical dimming, which shuts out nearly all light outside the augmented reality elements on the tabletop, drawing users’ focus to the data and cutting down on glare in outdoor environments.
Tilt 5
Tilt Five: Immersive Table-Top Gaming
Tilt Five was another popular booth. The startup produces augmented and virtual reality gaming hardware, and has partnered with third party game developers to build software that integrates turns table-top games in AR experiences. The full system includes a game board, a light pair of AR glasses and a control wand.
The company raised over $1.7 million in fan funding on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. It’s been shipping out completed products to its backers since December and hopes to have them all sent out by the end of the summer. Now, it has set its sights on expanding its offerings.
“We actually just signed with Asmodee Digital, who makes games like Catan, Carcassonne and Gloomhaven,” said Tilt Five Head of Communications Stephanie Greenall. “So we'll be taking a select number of their titles and putting them onto the board.”
Since last year’s AWE conference, Tilt Five has added mixed reality streaming, which allows fans to share their adventures on streaming and social platforms and the “XE Gameboard,” a larger board that tilts up so you can see further into the game.
TikTok’s booth showcasing its new AR features on June 3, 2022. Photo by Mallika Singh
TikTok Plays Catch Up in AR
About two months ago, TikTok launched Effect House, an AR development platform that plugs right into its mobile app. It’s an attempt to catch up on creative studio applications like Meta’s Spark AR Studio for Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat’s Lens Studio.
Effect House is built on a visual scripting system and a range of popular templates that is meant to make it easier for everyday creators to create their own visuals, without needing to know much about writing code.
According to Greg Feingold, AR ecosystem community lead at TikTok, there are already around 8,000 creators on Effect House’s Discord account, and videos using Effect House have already reached over 1 trillion views.
Fungisaurs
Fungisaurs: Augmenting Play with Figurines
L.A.-based artist and digital sculptor Aiman Akhtar’s background in 3D modeling and animation at studios including Nickelodeon, Dreamworks and Blizzard prepared him to develop his own line of augmented reality kids’ toys–in the form of small “dinosaur mushroom creatures.”
Fungisaurs started as a collection of real-life plastic toys in 2017, funded partially on Kickstarter. Three years later, Akhtar partnered with augmented reality company Octagon Studio to build ARise, a camera app that brings the physical toys to life and supports interactive play.
Next up for the company is more app integration, card functionality and a second series of characters.
“If we have a card read as well as the object, then we can trigger animations, we can trigger background changes,” Akhtar said. “So we can make narrative board games that can actually convey stories and have more interactivity between players.”
Fungisaurs was one of the only companies at AWE with a product tailored towards kids.
A conference attendee tries the HaptX DK2 Gloves on June 3, 2022. Photo by Mallika Singh
HaptX: Prototype the Training, Not the Product
HaptX, a leading producer in the haptic XR space, makes AR products for customers in training, manufacture, design and telerobotics. The company is based in Redmond, WA with offices in both San Luis Obisbo and San Francisco.
Its development kit, the DK2 Gloves, uses compressed air to simulate resistance by applying braking to the backs of the gloves, up to eight pounds of force per finger and up to 40 pounds per hand. The air contours the shape of the gloves to objects touched in virtual reality worlds.
Recently, HaptX worked with Nissan to mock up its Nissan Leaf electric vehicle virtually. Its system allows designers to touch and interact with the virtual car, obviating the need for wasteful and expensive automotive prototypes, which can cost up to $200,000 per model. HaptX’s gloves, meanwhile, cost in the high five figures for enterprise customers.
HaptX had both a stationary and mobile demo station at AWE. The mobile device was set up in a backpack. One woman trying it out at the Expo said the backpack’s weight was about the same as two MacBooks.
“This will get significantly smaller in the future,” said Victor Oriaifo, an account executive at HaptX.
He said the company aims to shrink the portable device once it’s manufacturing at scale.
***
Watch the main stage presentations on the AWE.Live mobile app ( iPhone/ Android), where the remainder of the sessions will appear by the end of next week. View this article in video form on our TikTok page!
Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that AWE had its first conference in 2013. It was in 2010. It's also been updated to more accurately reflect the number of users on TIkTok's Discord account.
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Kore Infrastructure Is Turning Waste Into Clean Energy in Downtown LA
09:37 AM | April 12, 2022
Courtesy of Kore Infrastructure
Hydrogen accounts for roughly 70% of all matter in the universe—and these days, it seems that hydrogen power startups account for about the same share of emerging green-tech companies in California. But while the space is replete with big dreams using hydrogen to power planes, cars, buildings and more, most companies are still years away from finishing a prototype—let alone building a plant or going to market.
Not so for Kore Infrastructure. The energy startup is already online at its plant in Downtown Los Angeles, where it’s converting tons of waste into hydrogen, biogas, natural gas and carbon char every day.
The idea behind Kore’s technology is similar to that of other companies also deploying the process known as pyrolysis: You take organic waste like deadwood and brush, heat them in a low oxygen environment at a very high temperature, and collect the gasses and carbon char left over. When all goes well, this avenue of hydrogen production can be carbon negative, meaning that CO2 is removed from the carbon cycle that usually sees it burned into the atmosphere.
When a pile of manure is left in a field, for instance, it naturally converts into methane and CO2—two greenhouse gasses that warm the planet. But if the manure is fed into a pyrolysis machine, about half of that carbon is converted into solid carbon, also called char. In this form, the carbon atoms can’t be broken down by microbes and released as CO2. The element is then sequestered as a solid, and its potential to warm the atmosphere is eliminated.
Now, after 14 years of quietly developing and building its technology, Kore is coming out of stealth mode and ready to start selling its pyrolysis machines to practically anybody looking to process organic waste. The company’s machines can handle a variety of inputs—from nut shells, agricultural tree prunings and biosolids to construction and demolition waste.
“The big differentiator with Kore is having steel on the ground, having something operational, having something to show,” Kore founder and executive chairman Cornelius Shields told dot.LA. “If you're going to build these types of facilities, you have to go through a lot of pain.”
Part of the reason that Kore suddenly seems to be at the forefront of the pyrolysis race is that it’s had a considerable head start. The company has been quietly operating since 2008 and built its first full-scale pyrolysis machine in 2015. These machines are massive, occupying a real estate footprint of close to an acre; to the untrained eye, they look like an unholy amalgamation of pipes, tanks and valves. At maximum capacity, one of the machines can process 24 tons of feedstock per day to produce 1,000 kilograms of green hydrogen and six tons of solid carbon char.
Kore Infrastructure's pyrolysis machines in Downtown L.A.Courtesy of Kore Infrastructure
Kore’s technology eventually drew the interest of SoCalGas, which provided a $1.5 million grant in 2017 that allowed the startup to begin setting up operations in Downtown L.A. By August 2021, the company had completed permitting and construction of the plant and began running its pyrolysis machine as a proof of concept for commercial applications.
“We have been pretty quiet,” Shields said. “As a founder, I just wanted to make sure that we were ready [and] that the technology was working before we came to market—that we knew we had real data, and it just wasn't a hope and a prayer.”
While Kore is still coy on its exact business strategy going forward, Shields says it's fair to estimate that a pyrolysis machine will cost up to tens of millions of dollars to purchase. That’s not a small chunk of change—but compared to the cost of building a full pyrolysis plant, which can cost $100 million or more, Kore thinks it may be able to entice buyers.
“We're selling modular systems to industry,” according to Shields. “That kind of scaling is far faster because an industrial client can say, ‘Okay, let's do two modules to start. Let's see how that goes, and then we can add other modules.’”
Pyrolysis’ appeal is bolstered by financial incentives like the California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) tax credits and the federal 45Q tax credit, which award companies for saving and sequestering carbon emissions. Then there’s the hydrogen itself, which currently costs about $10 per kilogram at the gas pump if you drive a hydrogen car. And even the char left over from the process is valuable: The solid carbon can be used in fertilizers and to strengthen concrete, but it can also be burned as a coal substitute. (Obviously, burning the char undoes all the hard work of sequestering the carbon in the first place—but for hard-to-decarbonize industries like steel and cement production, a carbon-neutral fuel source is a massive improvement over coal.)
“We can decarbonize transportation fuels in the state [and] decarbonize the supply chain for natural gas—and then use the same technology to make hydrogen as demand for that ramps up,” Kore executive vice president Steve Wirtel told dot.LA. It’s this sort of double-edged benefit that makes Kore’s technology exciting for Wirtel: Pyrolysis converts carbon that would otherwise warm the planet into a coal substitute, and produces green hydrogen in the process.
Given those multiple revenue streams, pyrolysis is becoming an increasingly attractive waste disposal avenue, and Kore is hoping to have its first commercial machine sold and delivered to a customer by the end of this year. The company is also looking to raise an “institutional round of capital,” Shields said, citing interest from private equity investors.
He added that Kore is already drawing international interest in its technology, but is planning to stay conservative for the time being and focus on scaling locally—part and parcel of the slow and deliberate pace that’s served the company well to this point.
“There's so much opportunity in our backyard in California, that's where we're going to stay for now,” Shields said.
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David Shultz
David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.
‘Don’t Lose the Stupid Way’: Melin Hats Co-Founder Brian McDonell on Building a Business
09:33 AM | June 07, 2022
Courtesy of Brain McDonell.
Brain McDonell didn’t have the stereotypical rags-to-riches story.
On this episode of PCH Driven, the Melin Hats co-founder joins the show to talk about losing everything, working when he was young and how he built his company.
With his dad as a successful entrepreneur, an 11-year-old McDonell got to experience family vacations at ski resorts and having family outings in Cabo, Mexico. But that all changed when his father’s business went bankrupt and the family was forced to sell off everything.
“I remember going to my parents at one point and saying, I want to go to the movies, and I would just go to them expecting to get some money… And my mom put her head down, she goes, ‘We're not going to have money for a while’,” said McDonell.
Without totally understanding what had happened, McDonell promised he would never let this happen to his family again; he began hustling.
Today, McDonell is the co-founder of a premium baseball hat company called Melin Hats.
His idea came out of a problem that bedevils baseball cap wearers: the funky smell and sweat stains that accompany heavy use.
“I really want to solve [problems] like the sweat stains and like the product integrity of the shape… that basically we could make the hat stay looking and smelling and feeling new, much, much longer,” said McDonell.
Building in features like a moisture-wicking lining that would actually draw the sweat off your forehead.
McDonell said he wasn’t always the smartest or most athletic person in the room, but he was always careful with his decisions and did everything possible to reduce risk, including vetting everyone he works with.
“Don't lose the stupid way,” he advised. “If the business idea was wrong. Fine. Be judged for that. But don't die off in some random, silly circumstance,” said McDonell.
Now a father, McDonell thinks often about what he’d want his own son to learn from him. He acknowledged that making a business will always come with many challenges, but he hopes those will become teachable moments.
“I think just having the aptitude to understand that everything in life is within our control, so long as we're committed to the outcome that we desire, and how [we] treat people.”
Subscribe to PCH Driven on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeart, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.
dot.LA Engagement Fellow Joshua Letona contributed to this post.
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Jamie Williams
Jamie Williams is the host of the “PCH Driven” podcast, a show about Southern California entrepreneurs, innovators and its driven leaders on their road to success. The series celebrates and reveals the wonders of the human spirit and explores the motivations behind what drives us.
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