CES 2022: Kura Technologies received the Innovators Award for its revolutionary AR hardware and software solutions
...The Kura Gallium surpasses rival AR headsets with a 150-degree field of view (FoV), 95 percent transparency to seamlessly superimpose images on the real world, a compact, 80g form factor, as well as an 8K resolution and brightness 100 times that of competitors. ...
Rivals have comparatively reached 52 degrees of FoV, 25 percent transparency, and a fraction of brightness, respectively, according to figures from the firm.
Kura also achieved hardware advancements for its flagship device with proprietary designs, leading to an included a full-colour MicroLED display, a custom MicroLED display driver for an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), as well as custom pinhole waveguides, the company said. ...
The news comes after Silicon Catalyst, the only semiconductor startup incubator in the world, accepted Kura Technologies for its programme. Kura Technologies hosts a roster of prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduates among over half of its leadership.
Mojo Vision Raises Additional $45M to Put Smart Contacts in the Eyes of Athletes
Mojo Lens is ostensibly years away from commercialization, however the company announced at CES 2022 that it’s taking a step forward by partnering with a number of fitness brands to explore how to better integrate its smart contact lenses into sports and training. Mojo Vision has partnered with Adidas Running, Trailforks, Wearable X, Slopes and 18Birdies. ...
Much like Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface (BCI) startup Neuralink, Mojo Vision sees early applications first targeting those afflicted with bodily impairments; in Mojo’s case, it aims to use Mojo Lens to create enhanced image overlays to alleviate certain visual impairments. ...
See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/ditch-the-smart-glasses-mojo-visions-smart-contact-lenses-want-to-track-your-fitness/
Cinedigm Agrees to Acquire Streaming and Entertainment Company Digital Media Rights Adding 10 New Channels and 7,500 Titles
Deal scales up Cinedigm with more than 30 streaming services, 46,000 hours of content, 40 million monthly viewers, 18.5 million social subscribers, and 4+ billion views
Cinedigm enters Ad Network Business via DMR's Ad Network & Marketplace which garners more than 100 million connected TV impressions a month
First, the company is a leading global distributor of feature films and television series for the streaming ecosystem, with more than 7,500 titles under distribution.
Secondly, DMR has developed and operates 10 channels focused on enthusiast audiences. Six of these proprietary streaming services are available as free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels and/or video-on-demand apps (all apps have ad-supported VOD and premium, subscription VOD options):
- AsianCrush (asiancrush.com): The one-stop portal to the latest Asian entertainment featuring premium movies and shows.
- Midnight Pulp (midnightpulp.com): The perfect late-night channel to end all boredom, offering an expertly curated selection of cult programming with a twist of millennial irreverence.
- RetroCrush (retrocrush.tv): Dedicated to the Golden Age of anime.
- Cinehouse (www.cinehousetv.com): both a standalone channel with apps available across all major devices, as well as a Linear TV streaming bundle, curating niche, enthusiast channels focused on the best movies and TV shows from around the world. Among the linear FAST channels available in Cinehouse's lineup are 24/7 streams of AsianCrush, RetroCrush, Midnight Pulp and KMTV, with more being announced in 2022.
- Cocoro (cocoro.tv): The ultimate destination for kid-friendly shows designed to educate and entertain.
- KMTV (kmtvnow.com): Features all things K-Pop, from music videos of the newest releases to variety show highlights, to all things in between.
Third, through its DMR Social unit, DMR curates social video channels for most of the above brands, as well as four others, with more in development:
- C-Crush: A community for fans of the best Chinese TV and movies.
- Cinehouse Romance: A curated selection of romance-focused movie clips from DMR's library of arthouse and indie films.
- K-Crush: A community for Korean cinema, TV and pop culture addicts.
- QTTV: A community for fans of queer cinema.
See the full story here: https://www.streetinsider.com/Accesswire/Cinedigm+Agrees+to+Acquire+Streaming+and+Entertainment+Company+Digital+Media+Rights+Adding+10+New+Channels+and+7%2C500+Titles/19430520.html
Multimodal AI Modeling is the Future, But It’s Also Pandora’s Box
The discipline of building or teaching a neural net to have this kind of multifaced awareness is called multimodal modeling. Tools like DALL-E are designed to generate images based on text descriptions, while CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training) is intended to associate text and images more robustly than current AI models. ...
Values matter to this bias problem, in a concrete sense. It’s such a low-tech part of the solution to a high-tech problem. Deepfakes are here, and to get software to identify deepfakes reliably, we are going to have to teach computers how to identify and understand us better — and there’s no putting that back in the box. As AI progresses, we’re going to leave our comfort zone over and over. It’s an inevitable consequence of making tools with near-human capabilities. What matters is how our values are reflected in the intelligent systems we create. Maybe we don’t need to worry about a robot uprising. Maybe the dystopia is coming from inside the house.
See the full story here: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/330247-multimodal-ai-modeling-is-the-futurebut-its-also-pandoras-box
HTC Vive Wrist Tracker Could Solve One of VR’s Big Problems
The device, announced today at CES 2022, is designed for use with HTC’s all-in-one Vive Focus 3 headset, which tracks the location of a user’s hands using onboard cameras. That approach can fall short for a number of technical reasons, including that it’s hard to tell if a hand is small and close to the camera, or large and far away. Invisible LEDs on the Vive Wrist Tracker add more points of reference and exact scale to the equation, allowing the headset to calculate precise location and movement through a 3D space.
The Vive Wrist Tracker is about the same weight as a smartwatch, even though it’s more bulbous, and it’s 85% smaller and 50% lighter than a Vive Focus 3 controller. ...
The new Vive Wrist Tracker will available in the first quarter of 2022 for $129.
See the full story here: https://gizmodo.com/htc-vive-wrist-tracker-could-solve-one-of-vrs-big-probl-1848306450?fbclid=IwAR3tJAHl13NYf3RSSLnwUYt4XP1V1WMpm9sMRmlO4hjZrn6Vs1xFHMFj1pU
CES: Top Concepts from the 2022 Eureka Park Startup Zone
ETC’s George Gerba and Don Levy spent Wednesday perusing the CES 2022 Eureka Park startup zone looking for new companies and unique products that would be of particular interest to the entertainment industry. Among this year’s most compelling concepts were an AI-assisted content creation tool, COVID-compliant tech ideal for workspaces and productions, AI-based audio tech, a response tracking system for dynamic displays, emerging NFT approaches for artists, new tech investing models, light-based networking solutions, paper-based biofuel cells and haptic wearables.
Below are short descriptions of booths that stood out to ETC. They will be included in the post-CES roadshow presentation and report that ETC will produce.
Audio Design Desk is an AI-assisted content creation tool that reinvents the process of connecting audio to video. It is particularly good with sound design, foley-like sound effects and music.
ADD is intelligent, so it’s aware of the types of sounds and music you import, use in your projects, and will even make qualified and informed recommendations to help keep your projects evolving in all the right ways. For example, temporary music queues can easily be replaced with final music, since it intelligently replaces sounds without losing sync.
Used on productions seen on Netflix, Amazon and HBO Max, ADD’s AI technology allows editors to seamlessly add sound effects to videos by choosing from a library of more than 30,000 royalty-free sounds. Like a Spotify for sound effects, it suggests new sounds based on past preferences.
Soapy is of interest because it supports COVID compliance in a friendly, gamified and verifiable manner. The personal hand washing station will help any production set remain COVID-compliant in an environmentally friendly and socially responsible manner.
From touch-free water and soap triggering, perfect wash tutorials that gamify handwashing, and WHO approved timing cues, Soapy ensures that the most effective wash is achievable every time. Powered by AI and connect to the IoT, its semi-biometric recognition process tracks personal performance and body temperature while protecting each individual’s privacy.
Soapy provides the monitoring, alerts and reporting that guarantee 100 percent assurance and compliance. As a bonus, Soapy donates one unit to a disadvantaged community for every ten units sold. The models start at $3,495, with soap refills starting at $89 per bottle.
Supertone is an AI-based audio tech startup. The company is researching and developing technologies that seamlessly convert voices, create new unique voices, capture a singer’s tone and rich expression, and separate any voice from unwanted background noise.
ETC was shown a project currently in development where they capture the emotional tonality, timber, intonation, and other qualities of an actor’s dialog in the original language, and then apply those qualities to the dialog from a dubbing actor in another language. This could be applicable to anyone creating multilanguage versions of content.
ADDD offers a portable, AI-driven audience facial, body-language, and emotional response tracking system for dynamic displays intended for rolling vehicles, pop-up marketing events and special temporary venues. The system recognizes, tracks, skeletonizes and analyzes each person’s response as they look at the screen, and can adjust the content in response to the reactions.
A number of companies offer audience detection and dynamic real-time modification of the marketing message or programming for permanent installations. Portability is ADDD’s unique value proposition.
Echo Labs is another example of how artists are jumping into the NFT space. Jerrod Maruyama, who has designed a great deal of Disney merchandise has partnered with Echo Labs to develop Little Corgi Cuties.
Although no plans for Maruyama’s work have been announced yet, another artist, Josh Agle (better known as Shag), has already released Qitty Qats NFTs in partnership with Echo Labs and posted a product road map. When you buy a Qitty Qats NFT they will mail you a 5x 5-inch paper print of it. For a fee you can upgrade to a larger signed paper print or one printed on canvas.
The website will also offer scheduled meetings with the artist on Discord, Qitty portraits of fans, merchandise, giveaways and parties; all for additional fees.
Kryptulip may be an alternative funding path for startups. From the website: “Kryptulip is an investment platform that connects inventors and new technology enthusiasts. It associates NFTs (non-fungible tokens) with IP assets. Inventors design the rewards they will offer in exchange for the purchase of NFTs by investors. Investors can thus contribute to the emergence and development of new technologies that are important to them, and profit from attractive returns on investment.”
Unlink VR is a laser light-based networking solution for free roaming location-based entertainment and other large-space situations. Unlink’s light sensors fit any VR headset. Laser light transmitters and reflectors are placed throughout the room. If the light from one sensor is blocked, the sensor immediately switches to any other visible transmitter or reflector. The system can deliver an uncompressed 4K signal 40X faster than Wi-Fi.
The product is still in development, but you can sign-up for notifications when they start accepting pre-orders.
BeFC, or bioenzymatic fuel cell, is a thin, lightweight, flexible paper-based biofuel cell that is biodegradable, environmentally friendly and economically viable. The company is also developing flexible electronic platforms that combine a range of sensor technologies with wireless communication for data readout that are optimized to partner perfectly with BeFC fuel cell tech.
They expect the BeFC battery to come to market in early 2023. With 97 percent of batteries ending up in landfill or being incinerated, BeFC biofuel cells are a biodegradable organic energy source that can help protect the environment.
OWO looks like a tight-fitting short sleeve zipper-top, but can wirelessly deliver haptic sensations to 10 locations (including abs, pecs and arms) for up to eight hours on a single charge. Algorithms vary nine parameters to create 30 distinct sensations, including wind, insect crawl and bite, light and severe abdominal wound, lift or push objects, shot with exit wound, machine gun recoil, and more.
The OWO works natively or semi-natively with a suite of games such as “Fortnite,” “League of Legends” and “Rocket League.” The top is available in six sizes.
See the original post here: https://www.etcentric.org/ces-top-concepts-from-the-2022-eureka-park-startup-zone/
Panasonic Enters Into Immersive Entertainment Collaboration With AREA15
CES 2022, Panasonic System Solutions Company of North America announced its newest collaboration with AREA15, an experiential event and entertainment district located just off the Strip in Las Vegas. AREA15 offers a curation of vibrant, themed entertainment experiences and ever-changing art and retail experiences for locals and visitors of all ages.
This five-year collaboration with Panasonic will provide AREA15 with turnkey solutions from the very best of Panasonic’s solutions such as software development, engineering, projection design, show-quality support, industry-leading projectors and more to provide seamless and unparalleled 360-degree visual experiences.
AREA15 is utilizing Panasonic’s PT-RQ35KU 3-Chip DLP® SOLID SHINE 4K laser projectors for its multi-purpose Live Events space, The Portal. ...
See the full story here: https://aithority.com/gadgets/panasonic-enters-into-immersive-entertainment-collaboration-with-area15/
CES: Hyundai Envisions ‘Unlimited Mobility of Things’ Future
During CES 2022, Hyundai Motor Company presented a compelling vision of the future that blends the metaverse, the Internet and robotics to make time, distance and the distinction between the physical and virtual worlds irrelevant. The company’s media event started with videos of a robotic platform concept that could be built into furniture for dynamically reconfigurable rooms. The platform technology could also carry people in personal mobility pods and power autonomous vehicles. Hyundai describes its vision as the “unlimited mobility of things.”
From there, Hyundai discussed its partnership with advanced robot maker Boston Dynamics and Microsoft’s cloud and AI division. Together they are developing a vision of the future that involves digital twins and physical avatars.
With digital twins, Hyundai envisions people experiencing simulations of locations and work environments that are driven by AI technology and delivered via the Microsoft cloud.
For physical avatars, actual robots such as Boston Dynamics’ Spot dog robot would be the physical proxy or telepresence device for a person. The use case example was Spot exploring the surface of Mars while a person on Earth saw, heard, and felt everything Spot experienced via an immersive display and haptic feedback devices.
“With our robotics we will expand human reach,” explained Hyundai Motor Group executive chair Euisun Chung (above). Vehicles are already transforming into living spaces. Hyundai envisions its future evolving from moving physical things to transporting our senses.
“Robotics will create a horizontal connection across our business areas and create new business systems that we call the unlimited mobility of things,” said Chung. “Like the metaverse, it builds a bridge between the physical world and new virtual realities.”
See the original post here: https://www.etcentric.org/ces-hyundai-envisions-unlimited-mobility-of-things-future/