We are engaged in the design, manufacture, marketing and sale of augmented reality wearable display and computing devices, also referred to as head mounted displays (or HMDs, but also known as near-eye displays), in the form of Smart Glasses and Augmented Reality (AR) glasses. Our AR wearable display devices are worn like eyeglasses or attach to a head worn mount. These devices typically include a wearable computer, cameras, and sensors that enable the user to view, record and interact with video and digital content, such as computer data, the Internet, enterprise data, social media or entertainment applications. Our wearable display products integrate micro-display technology with our advanced optics to produce compact high-resolution display engines, less than half an inch diagonally, which when viewed through our Smart Glasses and AR products create virtual images that appear comparable in size to that of a computer monitor or a large-screen television. This includes the representative forms such as augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) and virtual reality (VR) and the areas interpolated among them. Extended reality (XR) is a term referring to all real-and-virtual combined environments. Our wearable display products cover the entire spectrum from "the complete real" to "the complete virtual" in the concept of reality–virtuality.
For AR glasses, historically, see-through HMDs displayed the real world using semi-transparent optics placed in front of the user’s eyes. VR users wore large goggles which sealed their view of the outside world. Both types of these HMDs were large and bulky and as a result, they had little mass-market appeal. We have developed thin optics, called waveguides, that are fully see-through and enable miniature display engines to be mounted in the temples of the HMD which allows the form factor of the Smart Glasses to be comparable to conventional eyeglasses. Our Smart Glasses and AR glasses are designed for all day use cases and are small enough to fit in a user’s pocket or purse.
We believe that our waveguide optics and display engines offer a number of significant advantages over other wearable display solutions, including higher contrast, greater power efficiency, less weight, more compact size, and high brightness images for use outdoors. We also believe that our waveguide optics give us a substantial advantage over competitors’ optics, including other waveguides, because our solution allows us to produce optics that are fully transparent when off while also delivering the high brightness required for AR and enterprise Smart Glasses applications.
We believe that key growth areas for us are the enterprise, medical, consumer electronics, OEM, defense and security markets. We are addressing most of these markets by developing and selling our own finished products and building a growing eco-system of software and services internally and with our value added resellers, or VARs, developers and end customers. Another potential channel to these markets we are developing includes supplying mass production of waveguide optics and display engines to select third parties to use in their products.
We believe that our waveguides and compact display engine technologies are a key differentiator for enabling next generation AR and Smart Glasses hardware for the enterprise and consumer segments because they will ultimately allow us to make HMDs nearly indistinguishable from regular eyeglasses.
We have developed our own intellectual property portfolio that includes patents, over 22 years of manufacturing know-how, software, proprietary processes, materials and equipment to create high performance waveguides, and near-eye display products. We believe our technology, intellectual property portfolio and position in the marketplace give us a leadership position in AR and Smart Glasses products and waveguide optics and display engine technology.