Consumer Robots and AR Glasses are two emerging industries that need Computer Vision and Machine Learning technologies to succeed in the consumer market.
Robotics industry is actively creating the most affordable unified platforms (hardware + software), based on which it will be possible to create a variety of household robots – from children toys and vacuum cleaners, to “robots that deliver inside the house” and robots-assistants for the elderly.
AR glasses master essentially the same space. Companies like Apple need a cheap, but at the same time high-quality set of sensors and algorithms that would allow to use glasses in a living room.
Although Robots and AR glasses are two very different fields, they use basically very similar components to solve the same critical tasks in mapping (AR Cloud), indoor navigation, re-localization and inside-out tracking – SLAM algorithms and hardware (mono / stereo camera + imu).
Given the recent ML / Deep Learning developments and new sensors, I assume that in the 2-years outlook both Robots and AR glasses will use the same software and hardware stacks to conquer one of the last unconquered places – Living Room.
Will they need a common cloud solution?
It will all depend on the popularity of these devices.
If the user has only a pair of glasses or a vacuum cleaner at home, then the Cloud will be useful only to store maps. But as soon as several agents appear in one house (a few pairs of glasses or other robots), then immediately there is a need not only for storing the maps, but also to guarantee data exchange and real-time cooperation between these agents (robot-robot, robot-glasses, man- glasses-glasses-man).
This is a much more interesting area that will make it possible in the nearest future (5+ years) to provide users with a range of new services.
Best Regards,
CEO and Founder of Augmented Pixels
Vitaliy Goncharuk