https://augmented.reality.news/news/your-desk-can-be-ar-smart-surface-with-lampix-0177042/-------
Recently, the company worked with Bloomberg to install a Lampix around the office. Bloomberg hired five grad students to use the AR smart surface to deal with data. Popescu and Dumitrescu trained the students on how to use the product, then the students were able to use it however they imagined.
In one exercise, the group of students sat around a table to vote on something using the Lampix to project a voting system. The students then had to choose "yes" or "no" to a question by pressing their finger on the augmented light.
Popescu also sees the potential for the Lampix to be installed in major retailer outlets: "Walmart reached out and asked, 'Can you put a Lampix on every shelf?'" Popescu started thinking about how the product could be used to highlight instructions or facts about a certain product on a store shelf, mixing "both the best of Amazon, with the best of in-store experience."
Popescu is also willing to have Lampix integrate with other IoT hardware like the Google Home to say "Hey, Google Home, make my Lampix play a game." Or, the Lampix would have input control, like say if you put your finger on the Lampix surface and it displays your home control system. You can switch the controls on and off, which would be a visual representation of the Google Home.
Lampix has its competitors. Sony's Xperia smart projector is also set to turn any surface into a smart touchscreen, but Popescu notes that Sony's projector reacts to fingers and not objects. There is also HP's Sprout desktop which uses a 3D scanner to recognize objects in front of a desktop projector. Microsoft Surface is another product available which allows users to track images on its interactive surface.
Lampix is what Popescu calls "complementary and alternative" to Microsoft's HoloLens and similar AR products. Lampix can provide the same augmented experience, but without the headset, by projecting the image on an immovable surface. The product won't cost much, either.
Popescu notes that
about a 1,000 Lampix units made in China would put the price of each Lampix at a cool $300, compared to the HoloLens which starts at $3,000.
Ultimately, Lampix wants to get in with major companies first before it begins marketing to consumers:
If we were Google, we'd make it a consumer platform like Android, but we're not Google yet, so we want to get in with companies to help build the product and platform.
— George Popescu in an interview with Next Reality
Lampix has the potential to be used for a number of uses, including
medical care, retail, hospitality, gaming, and manufacturing. Popescu hopes to eventually integrate the technology as a software program that could be installed on Windows, Dell, HP, or any other hardware
