Augmented reality startup Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz said that the company is trying to develop an "operating system for reality," as with the technology, the user's screen is the real world.
Abovitz, in an interview at the WSJD technology conference, revealed a few more details on the mysterious technology that the company is developing, a year after Google made a $542 million investment in the startup.
Magic Leap is building a device that looks like eyeglasses which is capable of projecting computer-generated images on top of the real world. The startup has already sent out invitations to developers for creating apps that would be compatible with the technology.
The company has also taken over a portion of what was once a Motorola factory in South Florida, and has set up a "new product production line." Abovitz added that Magic Leap now has hundreds of employees, including computer experts and rocket scientists.
"We're not in the research lab doing theoretical things. We're gearing up to ship millions of things," said Abovitz, though declining to state specific details on when Magic Leap's technology is expected to launch and how many of the devices it is looking to sell.
The approach of Magic Leap is vastly different from the virtual reality technologies being developed by companies such as Facebook's Oculus, which is planning to release the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset next year. While virtual reality transports users into a new and immersive world, augmented reality builds on top of the real world.
Magic Leap played a video at the WSJD technology conference, which was claimed to be shot last Oct. 14 directly through Magic Leap's technology, without any usage of special effects.
The video shows a small robot hiding under a table, disappearing behind the table's leg whenever the wearer of Magic Leap's device moves. This would indicate that the technology features a form of 3D spatial mapping, and reveals how objects in augmented reality can interact with the user.
The video also features a solar system model that is projected to the top of a table, with the planets circling around the sun. The wearer is able to move to other sides of the projected solar system to look at the model in different angles.
What does the future hold for augmented reality? At this point, it looks like Magic Leap, seemingly being the forerunner in the technology, is the only one that can answer that question.
