China's Baidu, the Chinese equivalent of Google, live streamed a video yesterday of CEO Robin Li riding a self-drive vehicle along the streets and highways of Beijing.
Google quickly learned over five years ago electric vehicles (EVs) were the powertrain of choice for its then fledging driverless car program and the industry has since followed its lead.
Get ready to step up your game, explorers! Google Maps is releasing an update for its gamified program to encourage reviewing of businesses and other locations within the Google Maps app.
Marketing and healthcare, two of the leading industries in the adoption of augmented reality, continue to demonstrate applications for the technology in their businesses. Meanwhile, improvements to augmented reality devices are just around the corner with new developments from two display makers.
Magic Leap has always been intensely secretive about its work on its augmented reality headset, so it's interesting that they're now publicly recruiting developers to build software for the device before its launch.
Asobo Studios, one of the first companies to partner with Microsoft on HoloLens development, is applying their expertise towards building applications for various business verticals through their internal HoloForge Interactive team.
Samsung's new Galaxy S8 can turn into a PC with its DeX dock, but while that may sound like the future of mobile computing on the surface, there are definitely a few issues with the entire setup.
Lightform might just be the thing to have at your next party. The San Francisco-based company just created the first computer ever able to connect to a projector and instantly scan 3D scenes to mix reality with projected light.
When you listen to music, you don't just want to listen to your favorite songs and artists — you want to hear them perfectly. The same goes for videos you're watching, games you're playing, calls you're in, and anything else in which audio plays a key role.
In the event of an emergency where you can't answer for yourself, trained professionals can view your Medical ID on your iPhone to learn about your medical situation, granted that you have created one. But that's not all your Medical ID can do. With a new feature, iOS can share your Medical ID data automatically with first responders when you place an emergency call.
The results of Microsoft's $480 million contract with the US Army are on display and users continue to test the suped-up version of the HoloLens 2.
This week's Apple earnings offered a report of solid performance and guarded optimism about future iPhone sales, which may be impacted later this year by issues around the current coronavirus epidemic in China.
Apple's ARKit has built a considerable lead in terms of features over Google's ARCore, but Google's latest update to ARCore adds a capability that makes the platform a bit more competitive with ARKit.
Is the augmented reality magic fading down in Plantation, Florida? That's the first question some may be asking following a casual revelation over the weekend that Magic Leap, the maker of the Magic Leap One, has assigned much of its patent portfolio over to JP Morgan Chase as collateral.
If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?"
Augmented reality gaming startup Tilt Five is ready to reinvent old school Dungeons & Dragons-style games for the modern age with its augmented reality headset and tabletop game system.
Who's ready to let future Facebook augmented reality smartglasses read their brain? Well, ready or not, the tech giant is making progress in the area of brain control interfaces (BCI) by funding research.
The enterprise sector is where the money is for augmented reality at the moment, and remote assistance apps are the go-to app for many enterprise customers. We took a look at the leading apps and platforms from this category, from the top contenders to the underdogs with unique features.
Now that Microsoft has squarely focused on the enterprise market with the HoloLens 2, it appears Lenovo is content to play follow-the-leader with its new augmented reality headset.
While Magic Leap turned heads at the Game Developers Conference with AR experiences at the Unity and Unreal Engine booths, news broke that the company was the winning bidder for ODG's patents.
This week, the recurring theme in augmented reality can be summed up fairly succinctly: content is king.
Unless you're one of the world's top golfers, there's a good chance you are not stepping onto the fairways of Pebble Beach Golf Links this weekend.
Augmented reality and computer vision company Blippar has a new lease on life, as previous investor Candy Ventures has completed a successful bid to acquire the assets of the beleaguered company.
Despite its status as a hot commodity amongst emerging technologies, the augmented reality industry is not immune to the ebbs and flows that occur in every industry.
If you salivate at the idea of waking up to the Jarvis-powered smart window from the opening minutes of Marvel's Iron Man, then connected home appliance maker CareOS is here to make your playboy billionaire philanthropist dreams come true.
The emerging narrative as CES begins is that consumer-grade smartglasses require a heavy compromise in functionality in order to arrive at a form factor and price point that appeal to mainstream customers.
The recent announcement of a $480 million US Army contract awarded to Microsoft over Magic Leap for supplying 100,000 augmented reality headsets shows just a how lucrative the enterprise (and government) sector can be for AR.
With would-be unicorns Magic Leap and Niantic among its investments, Google is an active investor in augmented reality technology. This week, the search giant experienced both ends of the investment cycle, with an exit via Lyft's acquisition of Blue Vision Labs, and a funding round for Resolution Games.
Last week, Twilio showed off how avatar-based chat communications will work on the Magic Leap One, and now a new startup has unveiled yet another way that augmented reality telepresence and remote collaboration can take place on the device.
Augmented reality is becoming a slam dunk for sports entertainment, as leagues, their teams, and their broadcast partners have been quick to adopt AR.
Two companies armed with web-based augmented reality tools, Vertebrae and Shopify, are ready to help online retailers boost their sales.
For the augmented reality hardware industry to progress towards the consumer segment, display technology needs to get better. Investors recognize that, and they are showing AR display makers the money.
This week, we're beginning to see the wide ranging impacts of some of the early iterations of augmented reality hardware and software.
It doesn't matter how cool or groundbreaking a particular technology is, if it doesn't offer the promise of big returns on investments, you'll have trouble drawing interest from both Silicon Valley and Wall Street. That's why we're increasingly seeing existing augmented reality players doing everything they can to focus in on revenue generation, which was the message coming from Snap Inc. this week.
Ever since Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the helms of the world's most valuable brand, he has made it his mission to bring smartphones to lower-income communities. Born in India, Mr. Pichai has created several programs to address the needs of the Indian market, particularly the lower income families.
Because of quirks with cell radios and how Android was previously set up, custom ROM support for Galaxy S phones has been sparse these past few years. It's been almost nonexistent for US customers, while international users would see some ROMs. Thanks to Android Oreo's Project Treble, this will all be changing soon.
In 2017, major breakthroughs in smartphone-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) opened up new doorways for developers and users of both Apple and Android phones. Unfortunately for Android users, the solution that Google is previewing, ARCore, currently only works on three Android smartphones. But Silicon Valley start-up uSens is stepping in to fix that with its new engine called uSensAR.
The next frontier for AR hardware is the consumer headset, and tech companies of varying size and tenure are working hard to strike the right mix between comfort, cool factor, and cost. How these companies handle the hype and flow of information vary wildly.
While it's easy enough to ask websites not to track your browsing activity in Safari, they do not have to honor your request. Plus, some of the third-party content providers that websites use can actually invasively track you across other websites. Thankfully, iOS 11 includes a way to minimize companies from tracking you across the web on your iPhone.
While ARKit and ARCore are poised to bring AR experiences to millions of mobile devices, one company is poised to anchor those experiences anywhere in the world with just a set of geographic coordinates.
