Product Startup Podcast Episode 173: Augmented Reality for Hardware

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from an augmented reality expert on how AR is evolving for hardware startups.

00:00:06 Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between.

00:00:14 Narrator: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for physical product startups, sponsored by PTC's two best-in-class 3D CAD product development software solutions,

00:00:23 Narrator: Onshape, and Creo, and produced by Mako Design + Invent, the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services,

00:00:30 Narrator: specifically to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:00:33 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce Jonathan Bohun to the show.

00:00:37 Kevin Mako: Jonathan is the founder of Action Ship VR VR VR, AR, and Weedar, companies which are integrating the digital and physical world via augmented reality.

00:00:44 Kevin Mako: Today, Jonathan is going to share some valuable knowledge from inventors, and small manufacturers on what augmented reality is, what opportunities

00:00:51 Kevin Mako: are coming in the near future for augmented reality hardware, and different ways hardware startups can think of augmented reality integration with your physical product. Now,

00:01:00 Kevin Mako: on to the episode.

00:01:02 Kevin Mako: Hey, John, welcome to the show. Thank you, Kevin. We're excited today to have you talk about augmented reality and what that means for hardware startups and how this technology

00:01:11 Kevin Mako: is becoming more and more involved with the world around us, both the digital world and the physical world. And those things are closing in tighter and tighter.

00:01:21 Kevin Mako: So first and foremost, give us a bit of a background. You've been in the VR-A-R world for many years. You've got a firm that works on these products.

00:01:29 Kevin Mako: You've worked for museums and companies and all kinds of stuff in the augmented reality and virtual reality world.

00:01:35 Jonathan Bohun: Give us a bit of a background of how you got to where you are today. So augmented reality became my passion as soon as I found out about this technology

00:01:43 Jonathan Bohun: and my background before that, I got a mathematics and cryptology degree, mathematics and cryptography degree back in Ukraine.

00:01:52 Jonathan Bohun: And nine years ago, I moved to California. Yeah. And we were doing some projects on augmented reality since then. We worked with

00:02:01 Jonathan Bohun: San Diego Ocean Museum. We developed augmented reality for ZAM as well as project mapping.

00:02:07 Jonathan Bohun: We dropped an app with augmented reality for ASAP Rocky album testing in 2018. We did some prototypes for Beyonce.

00:02:16 Jonathan Bohun: Right now we have projects all around the world. Usually it's related to create good detailed model for augmented reality and

00:02:25 Jonathan Bohun: help new companies navigate.

00:02:27 Kevin Mako: What's really important when you start up augmented reality company. That's amazing.

00:02:33 Kevin Mako: Now, let's talk about the difference between augmented reality and virtual reality, just to start.

00:02:38 Jonathan Bohun: Virtual reality and augmented reality, both of them, is a mixed reality experience.

00:02:44 Jonathan Bohun: And in the virtual reality, you're fully immersed into realities that created without, without any physical reality.

00:02:54 Jonathan Bohun: Like usually virtual reality experience it started from your eyes. So your eyes are fully covered.

00:03:02 Jonathan Bohun: You cannot see any other obstacles, right? You fully immersed into that reality.

00:03:09 Jonathan Bohun: In addition to that, like, there are different touch points that people put on their hands on their body, to be like deeper involved in that.

00:03:18 Jonathan Bohun: In the same time, augmented reality, we're more used to it as like an additional layer is a reality that we see every day with our ice

00:03:28 Jonathan Bohun: with our five cents. Let's say it's an addition to five cents reality that we used to how well absorb information.

00:03:38 Jonathan Bohun: So it's augmented reality.

00:03:40 Kevin Mako: That's an additional reality you can enjoy while still being in your five cents reality. Yeah, I think the easiest way to look at augmented

00:03:50 Kevin Mako: reality is to think of something like glasses that layer over that only show you certain amount of

00:03:55 Kevin Mako: objects. You're seeing the real world in your normal viewpoint, but augmented reality is putting some other sorts of shapes, some digital shapes into your vision, as

00:04:04 Kevin Mako: opposed to virtual reality, which is a complete immersion basically into the digital world. Now, the reason this is important

00:04:10 Kevin Mako: is because we're quite interested today to talk specifically about augmented reality. As the hardware

00:04:15 Kevin Mako: is improved and as new hardware startups are coming into the space, considering many different

00:04:20 Kevin Mako: different use factors for augmented reality, it's becoming more and more potentially important to consider this on the horizon of how augmented reality fits into your startup or

00:04:29 Kevin Mako: how your startup innovation ideas or hardware product ideas might be useful in an augmented reality world.

00:04:37 Kevin Mako: So talk a bit, Jonathan, about what's happening in terms of the technology, because I know that

00:04:41 Kevin Mako: you and I kind of mentioned before the show, the computing power essentially is just starting to

00:04:45 Jonathan Bohun: catch up to the point where it's really starting to actually be workable in the real world environment around that. Now, explain a bit about that and why that's happening.

00:04:53 Jonathan Bohun: So there's a few things supposed to happen before we can see a mass adoption of augmented reality

00:04:59 Jonathan Bohun: devices. And you absolutely right, variable devices such as augmented reality glasses, it's probably

00:05:06 Jonathan Bohun: will be number one among all other devices because most of the information that we consume

00:05:12 Jonathan Bohun: through the days, through our life, that's information that we see. So a few things that's supposed to happen in the next few years.

00:05:22 Jonathan Bohun: Finally, we see a month adoption of 5G technology and satellite internet all over the world.

00:05:30 Jonathan Bohun: We see SpaceX sending satellites out to the space a few times a year.

00:05:36 Jonathan Bohun: We know that Amazon working on something like that. They will see a stable, good connection with enough speed

00:05:46 Jonathan Bohun: to send a lot of information. in the same time. So that's the one aspect. So 5G helps, the future internet development helps.

00:05:55 Jonathan Bohun: And another hand, the problem that you're solving when you're creating augmented reality device, you need enough power to process the information.

00:06:05 Jonathan Bohun: And there is like two ways to do it. And it seems like the industry really steering into the way where all the computing are going to be down in the cloud.

00:06:15 Jonathan Bohun: and we will just receive information, like, was internet, was internet of things, stuff like that.

00:06:22 Jonathan Bohun: Computing power is the second issue in internet speed, the first one, and the third one is the power capacity for the device.

00:06:31 Jonathan Bohun: Because, like, most likely the devices we're going to see in the next couple of years we'll have, like, additional power bank.

00:06:38 Jonathan Bohun: It will be maybe charged through your phone where you will have to carry a battery. Maybe in a near future, we'll see some devices that

00:06:48 Jonathan Bohun: will have like longer battery life. Right now, I think it's on average about two hours of

00:06:55 Jonathan Bohun: experience that would be what you really can hope for without looking for a charger.

00:07:00 Jonathan Bohun: Biggest company in the world such as Met, Apple, Snapchat, working to solve that issue.

00:07:08 Jonathan Bohun: And this summer, we're supposed to see augmented reality device from Apple. is going to give like a big jumpstart to the industry again.

00:07:18 Jonathan Bohun: Snapchat already working on augmented reality glasses and they send their developers kits to people that got like under their program,

00:07:26 Jonathan Bohun: I think last year, end of this year or beginning of next year, Snapchat supposed to release their augmented reality device

00:07:35 Jonathan Bohun: with a lot of apps that right now under development. That's what we're going to see. There are some other startups that,

00:07:43 Jonathan Bohun: focusing not on devices that you wear on your glasses, but like a separate, separate device

00:07:49 Jonathan Bohun: that you, for example, can put on your clothes and it's going to project some

00:07:54 Kevin Mako: information either on your hand or in front of you. There are some other avenues that companies exploring from my

00:08:00 Kevin Mako: opinion and my team shares as opinion like eye devices like glasses and stuff. It will be number one device for augmented reality.

00:08:08 Kevin Mako: That's amazing. So many different types of devices. They're starting with the most useful, the most practical right now, which is the glasses. But I love how you

00:08:17 Kevin Mako: mentioned all these other things. And I think that's what's very applicable to emerging hardware startups, especially those looking in the air space. There's a lot of opportunity

00:08:24 Kevin Mako: coming. This is like basically tip the iceberg, untapped, unforged, new development possibilities, new innovation, new ideas, new creativity

00:08:34 Kevin Mako: are going to come to create a whole bunch of different devices. You're going to have your primary devices, which are more than likely

00:08:40 Kevin Mako: for the foreseeable future being made by some of the biggest companies in the world. But then think about all these accessory devices, all these things, even something so simple as

00:08:49 Kevin Mako: a QR card poster, which can be used by AR to do various things. I know you worked on early sign technology where you could use these

00:08:56 Kevin Mako: glasses and you have certain kind of data points or whatnot that could actually change a sign on a

00:09:01 Kevin Mako: road or somewhere else to a different sign based on your inputs and that sort of stuff. So there's a lot to different emerging technologies that are coming and a whole information

00:09:11 Kevin Mako: technology innovation era that's going to start really now, tip of the spear, so to speak, a really interesting technology coming.

00:09:19 Kevin Mako: I want to talk a bit about the user interaction potentially for these products

00:09:24 Jonathan Bohun: because I know you do a bunch of work in the space of using augmented reality to enhance the user experience. You've been doing a lot of that in the cannabis space in particular.

00:09:33 Jonathan Bohun: Talk a bit about that and how AR is being used to. enhance customer experience across a variety of physical products these days. That's a good question.

00:09:44 Jonathan Bohun: And you know, something that I want to talk about, like another angle that we have to

00:09:49 Jonathan Bohun: consider when we're thinking about mass adoption, it's people want to use something together.

00:09:57 Jonathan Bohun: Most of the augmented reality project, unfortunately, they are like single user base,

00:10:04 Jonathan Bohun: Right, that's not necessary you're going to see what I'm going to see in augmented reality.

00:10:09 Jonathan Bohun: And there is some limitations that, again, Apple did a huge step forward with their LIDAR technology

00:10:18 Jonathan Bohun: when they are measuring the length of the image, right? So that helps. And I think we're going to see a lot of physical devices that will be like

00:10:27 Jonathan Bohun: augmented reality, and for example, or group of people.

00:10:33 Jonathan Bohun: so they can enjoy augmented reality together with their devices.

00:10:38 Jonathan Bohun: To be able to do that, you need, like, you want to make sure all the people, like all the devices look in the same direction and physical,

00:10:47 Jonathan Bohun: augmented reality and are going to be in help with that. With some magic lead project, we're working on something like that.

00:10:55 Jonathan Bohun: Unfortunately, it's still under development and it's still in the very early stage

00:11:01 Jonathan Bohun: where people are just wearing a device and can be in the same room and that room map for all the users that are enjoying the experience.

00:11:09 Jonathan Bohun: Like the easiest way to think that, right? There's like some physical anchor for augmented reality to start. And that's what we're going to see.

00:11:18 Jonathan Bohun: We're going to see like group augmented reality where you can join like with all the people that in the room we're going to see the same thing in augmented reality.

00:11:27 Jonathan Bohun: And that's part of the visions that we share to cannabis industry. So what we are using augmented reality for, we're helping companies

00:11:35 Jonathan Bohun: to build more deep experience with the brand through packaging, right? So we can make packaging live in augmented reality.

00:11:46 Jonathan Bohun: You can interact with that. You can read more information. We are like with augmented reality, big part of it. You don't have to print a lot of information.

00:11:55 Jonathan Bohun: You don't have to throw a book in there to explain something to your customer. you know you just need a device you can save production costs

00:12:04 Jonathan Bohun: on the packaging you know that's less paper produced less plastic produced that has a positive

00:12:12 Jonathan Bohun: effect of environment overall you know like it could be like some kind of wide box with a QR code but

00:12:20 Jonathan Bohun: when you see in the augmented reality it's all colorful you know it's giving the opportunity to open that box you can read the description you can

00:12:29 Jonathan Bohun: read a lot of information. We're going to see it really in, as I mentioned before, we're talking pharmaceutical industry where people would be able, instead of like big

00:12:38 Jonathan Bohun: as paper, you know, that usually you see in your medicine prescription, like all of that could be augmented reality.

00:12:46 Jonathan Bohun: In augmented reality, you can see how you're supposed to take this, whatever appeals or medicine.

00:12:52 Jonathan Bohun: What effect is going to fund you, you know, all can be merged with alarm.

00:12:59 Kevin Mako: for example, right? When you need to take the pill again, stuff like that. Another thing for mass adoption is for people to be able to use it all together in one

00:13:09 Kevin Mako: room and enjoy it, if we're going to be focusing really practical augmented reality. I think packaging and user experience with the product, that's an avenue

00:13:19 Kevin Mako: that we're going to see a lot of companies will explore. That's very powerful. And customization to the individual user is going to become a big part of that because

00:13:28 Kevin Mako: is you can essentially pair it with a user profile via their app or whatever technology they're using to interact and get kind of a unique experience based on the product that's

00:13:38 Kevin Mako: physically right in front of them, getting certain visual cues and whatever you could really dream up, right?

00:13:42 Kevin Mako: You're pulling in the real world that you see right in front of you on a shelf at a retail store, pulling out your phone or your glasses or like you mentioned

00:13:51 Kevin Mako: future tech that's going to have AR enabled and now digitally interacting with that product in real time, custom

00:13:58 Kevin Mako: to the user without all this kind of unnecessary physical packaging in order to get that very powerful, very visual experience.

00:14:07 Kevin Mako: And I like how you mentioned this major mass adoption layer of interconnectivity, because we've obviously all seen this through the rise of social media,

00:14:15 Kevin Mako: right? When the internet first came out, it was very linear. Look up information and that information

00:14:19 Kevin Mako: is shared with you. And of course, with the emergence of social media, we realize that the world wants to be connected through these new technologies.

00:14:25 Kevin Mako: Well, this is almost like the next evolution of that. So you're using AR to essentially connect different people together in a whole variety of

00:14:32 Kevin Mako: ways. A lot of that, because we're talking AR here, which is the mix of the real world and the digital world, that's going to require hardware.

00:14:39 Kevin Mako: So that's why I love having you on the show here to talk about hardware startups. For hardware startups, start thinking about how they're,

00:14:46 Kevin Mako: either their own AR projects or VR projects can interact, or if you have a non-AR VR VR project,

00:14:52 Kevin Mako: maybe think about how this technology might enhance your product in one way or another,

00:14:56 Jonathan Bohun: or whether it's the sales channel, like you mentioned, in terms of packaging. I mean, I think that's pretty straightforward and can be accessible almost today.

00:15:03 Jonathan Bohun: You can already start working on that type of technology, or it might be future-proofing your technology to think about, well, how can my users start collaborating, interacting

00:15:11 Jonathan Bohun: with my product, with the digital and the physical world combined? And only AR and VR is going to bring all those things together. I agree.

00:15:19 Jonathan Bohun: I'm really happy that you brought that glosses. there will be only one layer of devices that we're going to see on the market.

00:15:27 Jonathan Bohun: We're going to see a lot of devices that project information. It projects not straight to the eye, but in the air or on

00:15:36 Jonathan Bohun: the wall and stuff like that. So that will be really helpful with the advertisement.

00:15:41 Jonathan Bohun: And another thing that you mentioned is that what companies today,

00:15:46 Jonathan Bohun: where they should start in packaging that's pretty obvious. and I'm happy that more and more companies going into that direction.

00:15:54 Jonathan Bohun: For example, Instagram, like augmented reality masks, that's another thing that you can do today

00:16:01 Jonathan Bohun: and it doesn't require big budget to really implement that. I think different project or like projection devices, that's

00:16:10 Jonathan Bohun: really what a lot of startups must explore because when you're building like a projector or something like that,

00:16:19 Jonathan Bohun: especially if it's not variable, but it's devices that present it, like, and stays in the same

00:16:25 Jonathan Bohun: space. You avoiding those limitations that we mentioned before, like computing power,

00:16:30 Jonathan Bohun: internet power, et cetera. You can put your hardware together without waiting for technology to catch up. Today, that's possible.

00:16:40 Jonathan Bohun: Like, I think Amazon right now, and the ideas are working on a computing device that you can put, like, either a

00:16:49 Jonathan Bohun: AR hubs, those are devices input, like, for example, in a business center, and that device

00:16:54 Jonathan Bohun: going to stream augmented and virtual reality to smaller devices in the area.

00:17:01 Jonathan Bohun: So with all of that, you know, I think a lot of companies that really should be focusing on all sorts of projectors that you can work with.

00:17:10 Jonathan Bohun: It could be a keyboard. It could be TV. You need a big-ass TV. You need a small projector. They're going to give you like a big picture and you can interact with it.

00:17:17 Jonathan Bohun: It could be a different message every time.

00:17:20 Kevin Mako: That technology is already out there. Unfortunately, people either don't have, like, not aware about it, or they just care to explore.

00:17:29 Kevin Mako: Hopefully, this podcast will encourage people. Go into augmented reality space. Go into virtual reality. That's the future. Future is happening today.

00:17:40 Kevin Mako: Really good analogy with the Internet. It happened, like, 20, 30 years ago. Like, right now, guys, jump on board. and it will be interesting right. Let's make it happen.

00:17:50 Kevin Mako: John of those are great words of wisdom around AR and VR. Much appreciated for you being on the show today and giving a high-level overview of what's happening

00:17:57 Kevin Mako: and augmented reality today. Thanks again. Thanks, Kevin. Take care.

00:18:01 Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast. If you found some value in the show, please do us a huge favor and leave us a quick five-star review.

00:18:09 Narrator: If you have any questions, guest suggestions, or anything else, feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email, podcast at MakoDesign.com. That's podcast at MakoDesign.com.

00:18:18 Narrator: This show is hosted by Kevin Mako, North America's leading expert on product development for physical product startups.

00:18:24 Narrator: Huge thanks to our sponsors, PTC, and their two best-in-class 3D CAD product development software solutions Onshape in Creo, and Mako Design + Invent.

00:18:32 Narrator: The original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored specifically to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors.

00:18:39 Narrator: Thanks for joining and see you next time.