HWTrek sponsored 30 hardware creators and accelerators to visit Taiwan, Beijing, and Shenzhen on Asia Innovation Tour 2015 in August—and also in April 2014. We’re doing it again this spring. Register on the HWTrek platform and create a project to apply to join the next Asia Innovation Tour 2016 cohort destined to meet manufacturing industry experts, see assembly lines, and gain insights about China’s market in April 2016.
We reached out to Dhruv Adhia (CTO of H+ Technology) to learn more about the development of Holus. Dhruv participated in Asia Innovation Tour this past August. Here’s what he had to say about it:
For us at H+, it was fantastic to come across all kinds of resources from VCs to manufacturers and even entering the Asian market. These are all mighty tasks and with the help of HWTrek, I feel very confident that it will immensely benefit us.
HWTrek: Please introduce yourself and your project?
1) I am Dhruv, CTO at H+, which is a young high-tech startup based in Vancouver, Canada. At H+, we worked on number of projects that focuses on bridging the gap between digital and physical world by creating new types of display techniques. After working on number of high profiled business projects such as Ronald McDonald House and Vancouver International Airport, we at H+ thought, how can we bring the same magic to the hands of every consumer and developer? This was the idea behind Holus, it is the major focus of H+ right now. In brief, Holus is world’s first holographic platform that transforms flat 2D experience from any computing machine into multi-dimensional holographic experience.
H+ successfully raised $297,790 CAD during the summer of 2015 through a crowdfunding campaign for Holus on Kickstarter.
HWTrek: What’s the inspiration for your project? What problem does it solve or address?
Personal inspiration behind Holus definitely comes from Nature. Everything that we observe and feel in real life is a beautiful piece of both design and engineering. And combining, this we have some of the most intuitive interactions with the world around us. Everything that we see in our real life is a complete 3-dimensional image providing an accurate representation of any given object. The idea behind working on a new information medium is how can we bring this holographic nature of reality and digitize it? In other words, how can we have the digital world enter our life? This particular idea addresses a couple of key problems that we face with our current technologies and interfaces.
1) With flat 2D screens, we are at times isolated from our peers in physical space. This at times snatches away those wonderful moments, which are supposed to be lived with the people around us, rather than being isolated in the digital world. To solve this problem, there is a fundamental shift in thinking and that’s what I mean by bringing the digital world into real life.
2) Stagnation is the second key problem that we are working on overcoming with technology such as Holus. We find that our upcoming generation is growing up with a world of information at their fingertips. Young kids and even adults, really don’t have to make any effort in order to gain information. There are both pros and cons to this kind of technologies becoming mainstream.
We need an alternative, whereby placing the digital world into real life, we intuitively make an effort to gain information. We make use of 3-dimensional space. There is a recent example that I would like to share.
Dhruv talking about Magic Room while pitching Holus at the HWTrek Meetup as part of Asia Tour 2015.
We developed a Holographic Play space called Magic Room for sick kids living at Ronald McDonald House, which is a charitable organization. In this space, kids can interact with holographic virtual characters in the 3D space and forget about their worries while they are immersed in that space. It is essentially much larger version of the current Holus with surround wall projection, gestural and object detection system to interact and 3D sound system.
We had a wonderful outcome through a 4-year-old called Maisie. She has a virus called Entero Virus D86 and when kids have this virus they cannot walk. Moreover, doctors cannot explain why. She would visit Magic Room every day with her mother for 1 hour. She did this for next 1 month. After a month, her mother shockingly found Maisie finding her balance and took her first steps in Magic Room.
Maisie’s Story: A Magic Room Miracle from H+Technology on Vimeo.
We have literally seen mothers crying because after years they have seen their kids in normal conditions mentally and physically in some cases. This has been the best reward and finest example of our vision of Humanizing Technology.
Finally, Holus overcomes the problems of isolation and stagnation by providing a creative space in which humans gain positive psychological benefits as well.
HWTrek: What solutions did you use for hardware design?
Holus is a result of 2 years of combined effort in R&D and has gone through 12 iterations in order to bring a cost effective, energy efficient, and safe solution that does not sacrifice the final experience. We iterated different versions of Holus using different techniques for the purpose of achieving the right look and feel at the same time being able to reduce the cost during manufacturing.
HWTrek: What solutions did you use for prototyping?
Most of the prototyping was done in-house at H+ from designing and building Holus’ look and feel to PCB prototyping and Optics. Optics was another essential part of Holus apart from building our own display panel solution that is of the square aspect ratio. We had to use the photonics lab at University of British Columbia to understand how much light is being manipulated and this was a key for us to understand the final quality of the image being displayed through Holus. Apart from that, we had in-house SDK development to allow developers to transform any content from their computational device into a Holus compatible one. Software Development Kit also allows developers and designers to embed any interface from gesture control to brain interface in a matter of minutes through our proprietary middleware solution that is essentially a visual programming language. We are planning to open source our SDK and middleware solution in 2016 when we ship Holus so that other developers can more freely participate and begin a new era of holographic computing together.
HWTrek: What are the takeaways and lessons learned from working on this project that you’d like to share with other hardware startups?
1) Never underestimate how much time you may spend on prototyping, designing, and building your product. The journey from technology to product is a very long one, lone one than what we imagined. I would suggest adding 50% more time on what you think it will initially require you to create a product. Every iteration is a very conscious process towards understanding your audience and making sure it improves the overall final experience.
We live in an experience-based economy, and it becomes ever more important for inventors and creators to think not only about engineering, but design as well. And figuring out design does take time and all that time spent will pay off.
2) Once you have created a working unit, next is to never undermine the manufacturing process. In fact, it is a key that one understands manufacturing process while creating prototypes. This will save you a lot of time in post-production while contacting potential manufacturing partners.
3) Hardware startups can often face lots of good opportunities to work with other businesses, but this can exactly put a company off track if the goal is B2C. Stick to the goals and make strategic decisions in terms of who the company partners with.
They must contribute to your B2C goals as well. In short, Focus and Strategy will be the key.
HWTrek: What trend do you see that is changing your sector/industry or what shift would you like to see happen?
Currently, not only new kinds of technologies or devices are coming up, but new industries are created entirely on the quest for new information medium. AR, VR, and now HR (Holographic Reality) are all trying to answer the key question, what’s next in terms of information medium?
We have seen significant adaption of VR technologies as they became more affordable than what they were 20 years before. It will be crucial that consumers are part of this key equation because it is about evolution of some of the mainstream computing interfaces.
We at H+ are passionate about bringing the digital world into people’s lives at the same time not sacrificing the fundamental human aspect that is social interactions. The next computing devices will not be just about personal computing, but also social computing in physical space where humans are able to have what we call “Digital Social Campfire Experience.” Products that brings this experience would fundamentally disrupt the entire computing industry and would redefine our relationship with machines and digital world altogether.
HWTrek: What’s next for your project?
H+ vision is to Humanize Technology by becoming one with information that is another definition for singularity. It is a long journey before we are truly able to interact with unlocked pixels and Holus is the first step in that direction. Our ultimate goal is to produce holographic information display that projects information in the midair without the requirement of any medium. And it would do this at the same time maintaining image quality by projecting billions of pixels in midair, keeping the entire unit cost effective, energy efficient and safe. Currently, the plasma laser technology damages the skin if users tries to interact with pixels in the air. At H+, with the help of government funding, we are working on overcoming these challenges.
HWTrek: What are your ‘go-to’ sources for tech information and news? (Do you have any recommendations for a must-read/watch/listen article, book, blog, film, or podcast, etc.?)
I normally spend time reading research papers that takes depth into particular approach. There are no particular recommendations or go-to sources that I normally look up to, however I do have go-to inspirational blogs and activities that I perform, which unplugs me from the digital world for a while and helps me channel my thoughts. And this inspires me to go for something whose answers can take a decade to unfold. One such blog I really love reading is brain pickings and apart from that daily walks and yoga sessions keeps me sane. I also maintain my personal diary on science, technology, and spirituality, which is my go-to source at times as well.
