APX Labs Grabs $13 Million For Enterprise Smart Glasses Platform

APX Labs, makers of the Skylight smart glasses development platform, announced a $13 million investment today.

The round was led by NEA, but there were several others parties involved including CNF Investments, GE Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, SineWave Ventures, and other unnamed investors. Today’s round brings the total raised to $29 million.

While the company was happy about the money, CEO Brian Ballard, seemed most excited by the strategic investments from GE Ventures and Salesforce Ventures, which he felt really validated what the company was trying to do.

GE is a customer and they are going to do a large deployment within the next 12 months that will be a serious test case for the platform.

SkyLight is a vendor-agnostic smart glasses platform. That means it works across a variety of glasses manufacturers including Google Glass, which is focusing on enterprise use cases for now and others like Sony Smart Eye Glasses, among others.

Photo Credit: APX Labs

The hardware when used in conjunction with the Skylight software enables employees working in any industrial scenario to get instructions via the smart glasses interface while keeping their hands free.

Skylight interface example. Photo Credit: APX Labs

As for Salesforce, it sees smart glasses as the interface for the internet of Things, a trend it has made clear it is very much interested in. For now, Salesforce wants to push smart glasses technology to field service workers as a way to undertake repairs in the field hands-free.

You can imagine, there are any number of scenarios where this could be useful for these companies. For example, at GE you have people working on huge industrial equipment like locomotives, jet engines and wind turbines. Using smart glasses with Skylight, they are able to assess the situation, while getting information via a smart glasses interface with their hands free. It’s clear how this would be much more efficient than working with a tablet or laptop.

In some scenarios where a worker may be in a hazmat suit or inside a large machine, working with a laptop or tablet isn’t even possible. The smart glasses enable the worker to get information directly through the glasses.

Ballard sees this industry just beginning to emerge from first generation hardware and software, and moving into some larger scale deployments, like his company’s work with GE.

They currently claim to have dozens of customers including six out of the Fortune 10. Ballard wouldn’t name them all, although GE is one. Regardless, those are some serious players interested in this technology, and it shows that the market could poised to take off in a big way.

“Our target now is the biggest manufacturers on the planet,” he said.

The company also has some impressive partners to help build that market including Microsoft, Accenture, SAP and Deloitte.

It’s still early days for the Herndon, Virginia company, but Ballard hopes to use this money to continue developing the product, scaling the company to a wider market and supporting a larger number of smart glasses as they become available.

Comments

Intel announces the first 14 nanometre processor

At the Computex conference in Taipei, chipmaker Intel has revealed a fanless mobile PC reference design using the first of its next-generation 14nm "Broadwell" processors. The 2 in 1 pictured here is a 12.5" screen that is just 7.2 mm thick with keyboard detached and weighs 670 grams. The Surface Pro 3 – for comparison – is 9.1 mm thick and weighs 800 grams. It includes a media dock that provides additional cooling for a burst of performance. The next-generation chip is purpose-built for 2 in 1s and will hit the market later in 2014 . Called the Intel Core M, it will be the most energy-efficient Intel Core processor in the company's history with power usage cut by up to 45 percent, resulting in 60 percent less heat. The majority of designs based on this new chip are expected to be fanless, with up to 32 hours of battery life, offering both a lightning-fast tablet and razor-thin laptop. Intel is also delivering innovation and performance for the ...

Use Cortana to define words for you in Windows 10

Microsoft’s Cortana has many uses including sending emails or checking the weather. One of the best uses though is a simple look-up feature for words and their definitions. Combined with the Hey Cortana voice recognition using Cortana to tell you quickly what a word means is a great hands-free tip. There are multiple ways to get Cortana to define a word. If you have Hey Cortana enabled you can simply blurt out your request: “Hey Cortana what is the meaning/definition of inchoate ?” “Hey Cortana define ubiquitously “ You can, of course, also just type in your request e.g “ define beatitude ” although this admittedly takes some of the speed (and fun) out of using the personal digital assistant. For many words, Cortana displays the definition within a card, and OxfordDictionaries or EncartaDictionaries powers it. Sometimes, if Cortana misunderstands you or does not have the definition, the assistant opens up a web page after performing a web search for...

How ad-free subscriptions could solve Facebook

At the core of Facebook’s “well-being” problem is that its business is directly coupled with total time spent on its apps. The more hours you pass on the social network, the more ads you see and click, the more money it earns. That puts its plan to make using Facebook healthier at odds with its finances, restricting how far it’s willing to go to protect us from the harms of over use. The advertising-supported model comes with some big benefits, though. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said that “We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.” Ads lets Facebook remain free for those who don’t want to pay, and more importantly, for those around the world who couldn’t afford to. Ads pay for Facebook to keep the lights on, research and develop new technologies, and profit handsomely in a way that attracts top talent and further investment. More affluent users with more buying power in markets like the US, UK, and Canada command higher ad prices, effectively...

New wearable tracker can transmit vital signs from a soft, tiny package

Body sensors have long been bulky, hard to wear, and obtrusive. Now they can be as thin as a Band-Aid and about as big as a coin. The new sensors, created by Kyung-In Jang, professor of robotics engineering at South Korea’s Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, and John A. Rogers, Northwestern University, consists of a silicone case that contains “50 components connected by a network of 250 tiny wire coils.” The silicone conforms to the body and transmits data on “movement and respiration, as well as electrical activity in the heart, muscles, eyes and brain.” This tiny package replaces many bulky sensor systems and because the wires are suspended in the silicone you are able to create a denser electronic. From the release: Unlike flat sensors, the tiny wires coils in this device are three-dimensional, which maximizes flexibility. The coils can stretch and contract like a spring without breaking. The coils and sensor components are also configured in an unusual spi...

job

http://TheWeeklyJob.com/?id=147500

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog