Apple has acquired German augmented-reality firm Metaio.
Apple confirmed the acquisition with its standard response when it buys a company. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” said an Apple spokesman.
Metaio has worked on a technology that allows people wearing GoogleGOOGL-1.42%Glass-like eyewear to make any real world surface into a virtual touch screen. It also created software to let developers create tablet apps that flash repair instructions across the screen when the tablet’s camera is pointed at machines such as car engines or a printer.
The acquisition comes a few months after Piper Jaffray senior research analyst Gene Munster said Apple has a small team exploring augmented reality technology. He argued that Apple could help develop AR products that appeal more to consumers than products like Google Glass.
Apple news site 9to5mac reported earlier this week that Apple is working on adding augmented reality features to its Maps application. The feature would allow a user to point an iPhone camera down a street and it would overlay information about restaurants, cafes and other local businesses in that vicinity. The acquisition was earlier reported by 9to5mac.
Apple has acquired Metaio, an augmented reality startup that launched way back in 2003 as an offshoot of a project at Volkswagen. The company’s site said it stopped taking new customers, and now a legal document shows Apple has bought it. The document confirms a transfer of shares of the startup to Apple on May 21st/22nd.
When asked by TechCrunch, Apple responded with its standard reply it gives as confirmation of acquistions, “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”
The company began showing signs that something was clearly amiss whenit canceled its user conference in San Francisco earlier this month and later took down the company’s Twitter accounts. It also posted on its website a couple of days ago that it was ending purchase of products and subscriptions. Email tech support ends June 30th.
Our senior writer Josh Constine went to Metaio’s San Francisco office yesterday to investigate, and a nervous employee refused to speak with him and shut the door in his face.
A source told TechCrunch that clients who use Metaio are “flipping out” after seeing the shut down message on the website and not hearing a word from the company about what’s going on…until now.
Metaio hadn’t taken traditional Silicon Valley venture capital, but had raised some money from Atlantic Bridge and Westcott.
The company is well established. Many impressive projects have been produced using its tools including this one of with Ferrari that gives a potential buyer an AR tour of the car (as though the actual car isn’t cool enough):
And this one for travelers in Berlin to see what the scene they are looking atwould have looked like when the Berlin Wall was up. The program uses historical footage that you can see by pointing your smartphone or tablet at a particular place.
Metaio boasts a big community of developers with a 1000 customers and 150,000 users worldwide in 30 countries. All of them are wondering what’s up right now.
The acquisition could help Apple bolster its virtual reality and augmented reality efforts. Earlier this year, Apple patented a VR headset that works with iPhones. And yesterday, 9To5Mac’s Mark Gurman reported that Apple is working on an augmented reality feature for its Maps app that lets you point your phone at a street to see what business are around, or a restaurant’s exterior to see the menu or specials. Metaio’s technology could certainly aid with that.
Many, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, have called virtual reality the computing platform after mobile phones. Apple has found enormous success as a platform for desktop and mobile computing with OS X and iOS. Acquiring Metaio could help it power what comes next.
Microsoft reveals more on HoloLens hardware, gets 3D print boost from AutoDesk
Summary:Microsoft has offered a closer look at its HoloLens virtual reality headset and locked in a deal with Autodesk to bring 3D printing and modelling to Windows 10.
Image: MicrosoftMicrosoft has revealed more about its forthcoming virtual reality headset, HoloLens: hardware that's packed with sensors and a double-layered lens to deliver untethered holographic computing to the masses.
The company has taken a different tack to other VR systems on the market, designing HoloLens so as not to block out the real world, but rather allow the holograms it generates to co-exist with the real world, delivering more of a blended reality.
Given the device is braced to the user's head, HoloLens fortunately "weighs significantly less than the average laptop", Microsoft said. Also, its engineers and designers have built the VR set so it can be adjusted for a range of head sizes and also accommodate most eyewear.
The HoloLens may not weigh as much as a laptop, but it contains everything found in one, including core and graphics processors with an additional invention from Microsoft called the Holographic Processing Unit (HPU).
"The HPU gives HoloLens the real-time ability to understand where you're looking, to understand your gestures, and to spatially map the world around you. Conceived, designed, and engineered by Microsoft, the HPU is designed specifically to support the needs of HoloLens," Microsoft's head of next generation devices, Todd Holmdahl said.
To round out the holographic experience, the company has also worked on creating spatial sound so that users can hear a hologram from different directions. In addition to those sensors, it includes microphone array for capturing voice commands, a depth sensor to spatially map the user's environment and read hand gestures, as well as a photo and video camera to share images.
Finally, the headset has an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer that together form what Microsoft calls an "inertial measurement unit" or IMU, which works together with head-tracking cameras. Microsoft doesn't explain what the magnetometer, which is used to measure magnetic fields, is used for but the overall purpose of the IMU is to keep track of where the user's head is moving.
(There's a closer look at the device and its construction in this video.)
According to Holmdahl, Microsoft's plan is to bring holographic computing it to all Windows 10 devices.
Separately, it's also done a deal with 3D modelling software maker Autodesk to bring the company's 3D models to HoloLens.
It will be possible to use Autodesk's Autodesk Maya and Fusion 360 to build 3D models that can viewed in HoloLens. The idea is to help game developers and filmmakers speed up the development of new offerings, or to help engineers develop full-scale models during the design phase of product development.
Autodesk is also lending a hand on Windows 10, embedding its Spark 3D printing software in Microsoft's OS. Autodesk said its Spark APIs will be able for free to the Microsoft developer community.
"We're approaching a tipping point with 3D printing, which means there is a huge market opportunity waiting for companies developing applications for Windows 10," Steve Guggenheimer, chief evangelist for Microsoft, said.
"By providing the 3D printing building blocks found in the Spark platform and optimizing it for Windows 10, Autodesk has empowered our global developer community to confidently enter this new world of additive manufacturing."
IN THE EARLY hours of Wednesday morning, the age of robotic graffiti was born. KATSU, a well-known graffiti artist and vandal, used a hacked Phantom drone to paint a giant red scribble across Kendall Jenner’s face on one of New York City’s largest and most viewed billboards. By all accounts, it is the first time that a drone has been deployed for a major act of public vandalism.
In April last year, KATSU made headlines when he demonstrated that he had figured out how to attach a spray can to an off-the-shelf DJI Phantom drone. At the time, he was only using the drone to paint canvasses for white-wall galleries. But he assured the world that soon he would take his mad invention out into the streets and create enormous tags in places that were previously inaccessible to even the most daring and acrobatic taggers. Now, he appears to have made good on his promise in grand fashion.
“It turned out surprisingly well,” said KATSU, whose previous stunts include using a hacked fire-extinguisher to vandalise L.A. MOCA. “It’s exciting to see its first potential use as a device for vandalism,” he added, cheerfully.
The Calvin Klein billboard, one of New York City’s largest, sits at the busy intersection of Houston St and Lafayette St. The graffiti drone’s potential for troublemaking on an unprecedentedly grand scale is obvious. The billboard, which was previously graced by a topless, (perhaps) digitally-enhanced Justin Bieber, is absolutely gigantic, about six stories tall. It would have been almost impossible to tag Jenner’s face using the traditional methods. One could rappel off the top of the building or use a cherry picker, but neither option is exactly safe, or subtle, or quick enough that one could do it without cops on regular patrol spotting it. With the drone, by contrast, it took less than a minute. Still, the artist admitted, “It was a bit tense.” (Needless to say, the stunt was extremely illegal).
As the domestic drone industry grows feverishly, and multicopters like DJI’s Phantom become cheaper and more powerful, artists have been eager to experiment with the technology. It was only a matter of time, then, that people would figure out that the drone has enormous potential for subversive acts on the streets, where defying the laws of gravity is the whole point. Given the enduring privacy, safety, and legal concerns around the technology, conceptually it makes a certain amount of sense that it would find uses at the peripheries of what most people (let alone the law) would consider acceptable. KATSU’s scribble high above SoHo might not look like much, but it represents the potential that drones have to transform graffiti forever.
Click to Open Overlay Gallery GRAFFITI ARTIST KATSU RECENTLY DEBUTED A SERIES OF PAINTINGS MADE WITH A SPRAY-PAINT-WIELDING DRONE.PHOTOS BY KATSU AND THE HOLE
Still, police departments across the country probably don’t need to start panicking quite yet. This is, after all, graffiti drone 1.0. KATSU said that it can be temperamental and unpredictable, especially when it shifts perpendicular to the surface that its painting. The controls can be twitchy. “Seventy percent of the concentration is in maintaining this equilibrium with the two dimensional surface while you are painting,” he explained. We have a ways to go until drones are capable of autonomously blasting tags while their artist masters relax at home.
But that is the plan, and KATSU’s stunt this week was proof of concept. He is also gearing up to release a new, more user-friendly version of the graffiti drone “very soon.” While he refused to give me too many details, he did say that it would have some element of computer vision to help with stability.
Still, even graffiti drone 1.0 is something to be reckoned with. It has made what was up until yesterday an impossible tag look easy. KATSU himself seems to have been caught a little off guard by how powerful the drone has proven to be. “It’s a bit frightening.”
