Q&A: Augmented reality pioneer Ralph Osterhout
Photos: Osterhout Design Group; illustration: Rebecca Zisser
Ralph Osterhout has had a
fascinating career: building props for James Bond films, making dive gear and night vision goggles for the military, and, more recently, commercializing augmented reality glasses.
I had a chance to interview Osterhout on stage at last week's Rutberg FM conference. He predicted that consumers will be able to buy AR glasses next year that cost no more than a top-of-the-line smartphone and can do everything those devices can do, plus recognize faces and more.
"Everybody keeps saying 'Oh, it will be 5 years, 10 years,' " Osterhout said. "I really have no idea where they are getting this information. It's ridiculous. 'When is it going to be in the hands of the consumer en masse?' 2018 no question about it."
What are the things that still aren't quite there?
Battery. There's no question. Aside from that issue of power, there's really nothing.
What are the use cases that you think will drive adoption, both for businesses and consumers?
Let's put it this way: access to information and about people. If you are in sales, wouldn't you like to know before you walked into a store or walked into someone's facility, exactly what they bought, their buying patterns, who has buying authority, what their inventory levels are? That's kind of a no brainer.
It's [also] about personalization of information that helps you make decisions every day of your life.
When will we all stop staring at our smartphones?
I would tell you this: After you have towers, and after you had laptops and tablets and smartphones, where is logical next platform for computing and communications? Ask yourself: Where, located on the human being, is sight, smelling, hearing, and taste? One would have to be brain dead not to say the next place...is an integrated device on your head.
What happened with Google Glass?
I think it was an ambitious effort by Google to do something. It was just early. Was it a bad idea? No. It showed the world that holy moly this is big; this might be very interesting.