Introducing the Blue Vision AR Cloud
The future of Augmented Reality
By Peter Ondruska, Co-founder and CEO of Blue Vision Labs
After years of stealth R&D, we are excited to announce the release of the Blue Vision AR Cloud and our accompanying SDK for developers.
The Blue Vision AR Cloud overcomes the fundamental limitations of current Augmented Reality (AR) and enables the building of city-wide, shared and persistent applications where everyone sees the same thing for the very first time. We are opening it for developers to help them redefine how people interact with their technology, their environment, and each other in gaming, social and collaborative AR applications that were previously impossible to build.
We are also excited to share that this effort will be supported by our recently closed $14.5M Series A round of funding led by GV (formerly Google Ventures).
Augmented reality as it should be
Augmented reality has now reached hundreds of millions of people, but its potential is still very limited. For example, in a state-of-the-art AR game, you can place a digital object into your surroundings, but your friend would not be able to see it through their own device at the same place. This is because the component that connects everything together is missing.
We solved this by developing AR Cloud computer vision technology. The key part of our technology is a high-accuracy AR map of entire cities, which is stored in the cloud and perpetually updated. It houses AR content and also allows users’ phones to determine their positions with centimeter precision based only on the visual information from the camera. It allows us to turn entire cities into digital canvases upon which immersive digital experiences can be built.
It took us years to perfect this technology and we are making it available today. With our easy-to-use SDK you can build shared and persistent AR experiences for multiple devices within minutes. Here are some examples of what developers can build using the Blue Vision AR Cloud SDK:
Shared and social augmented reality: A user can place a digital comment, picture, or video for another user to find and discover.
Better maps and navigation: The user can now see navigation arrows clearly leading them to their destination.
Immersive AR games: We’re making it possible for thousands of users to simultaneously interact with both each other and and shared AR content in real-time.
A world without search: Content can now be simply overlaid on top of the physical world and displayed exactly where the user expects, such as information, reviews, and comments about restaurants or hotels surrounding the current location.
AR commerce: Get highlights, recommendation for nearby products and promotions.
The future of transportation: Instead of struggling to find your rideshare or your friend in a busy street, you can simply see an AR marker hovering on top of them, allowing you to connect intuitively.
These are just a few examples of what can be done using the Blue Vision AR Cloud SDK. We have mapped several cities and are opening up our platform for early adopters to help shape the future of social, gaming and search. To start building, sign-up for the early access program. We’re very excited to see what you come up with.
Raising a $14.5M Series A
We believe this is a pivotal moment for the future of augmented reality, and we’re just getting started. Today, we’re also revealing that we’ve raised $14.5 million in Series A funding led by GV (formerly Google Ventures), who join our current investors Accel, Horizons Ventures, SV Angel and others who led our previous $2.7 million seed round.
We’re using this capital to empower developers to build widespread AR applications using our platform, and to grow our team. We plan to use our underlying technology to open new possibilities in AI, machine learning, robotics, self-driving and other applications. Our goal is to enable a better future where both AR and robotics technologies can be enjoyed by everyone. If you are keen to make this happen, consider joining our team in London. We are looking for extraordinary talent with a love of technology, science and changing the future with impactful products.
— Peter Ondruska and the Blue Vision Labs team
