Products
We now produce and sell two main types of wearable display products: AR Smart
Glasses for a variety of enterprise and commercial users and applications, including
AR; and Video Viewing glasses, for on-the-go users as mobile displays for entertainment
and gaming. Our products are available with varying features, including with
and without integrated computer processors, and are offered as either monocular
or binocular display systems. Our AR Smart Glasses have many of the capabilities
of a smartphone such as cameras and computer processors that can allow applications
to be run directly in the AR Smart Glasses, enabling cloud connected applications
through a wireless link directly with the glasses. We believe we provide one
of the broadest range of wearable display products for AR and Smart Glasses
available in the market and that our products contain some of the most advanced
electronics, ergonomics, and optics for their respective target markets and
uses. Our products include:
Binocular Wearable Display Products
Our binocular wearable display products offered over the last 10 years have
included several models with differing native resolutions, virtual screen sizes
and various interface options before we standardized our current digital video
interfaces. Our binocular wearable displays products contain two microdisplays
(a separate display for each eye), typically mounted in a frame attached to
eyeglass-style temples or stereo headphones. These products enable mobile and
hands-free private viewing of video content on screens that simulate home theater-sized
screens, all of which support 3D video applications. These products can be employed
as mobile high-resolution displays with products such as smartphones with video
output capability, laptop computers, tablet computers, portable DVD/Blu-Ray
players, game consoles and personal digital media/video players. Our current
model, the iWear Video Headphones, which was first released in December 2015
is being phased out and will be discontinued during 2018. Our focus is now on
waveguide based AR products which can produce many of the same functions as
iWear but in a more “eyeglass” framework.
Monocular Wearable Display Products
Monocular products, due to their single eye display, are best used for push
notifications and “information snacking”. Typically, monocular products
have smaller fields of view that result in less information display capability
and no stereoscopic 3D or depth information.
In early 2014, we began selling our first monocular pair of Smart Glasses,
the M100, which was designed for the enterprise, industrial, commercial and
medical markets. The Vuzix M100 Smart Glasses are an Android-based wearable
computer, enhanced with a wearable monocular display and onboard processor and
wireless connectivity capabilities designed primarily for commercial, professional,
and industrial users. Vuzix M100 Smart Glasses serve up the digital world “hands
free”, offering access to information, data collection and more. The M100
provides enhancements to existing workflows and opens new opportunities in industrial,
medical, retail, supply chain, remote help desk, and many more aspects of customers’
businesses. An integrated head tracking, GPS system, camera and speech recognition
gives versatility to navigate and use the M100 in almost any working environment.
Its pre-installed apps can be used to record and playback still pictures and
video, track timed events, manage a user’s calendar, link to a phone and
more.
At the January 2017 CES tradeshow, we introduced the second generation pre-production
model of our monocular Smart Glasses product, the M300, with significantly improved
ergonomics, ruggedness and technical features. The M300 is a ruggedized form
designed specifically for enterprise and industrial use. The M300 entered volume
production and became commercially available in spring 2017. The second model,
the M3000 was honored at CES 2017 for its innovative design and engineering,
and is our next-generation waveguide based AR Smart Glasses for the enterprise
sector. The M3000 features improved display resolution and employs our advanced
waveguide optics and Cobra II projector engine that allow see-through operation
for more advanced AR applications. The M3000 uses many of the same components
as the new M300 and we expect to begin commercial production of it by fall 2018.
Both of these smart glasses can connect to the cloud to deliver digital content
directly to and from the job site and connecting it “overlaid” onto
the real world.
We introduced the Blade Smart Sunglasses as a monocular system at CES 2018.
We believe the Vuzix Blade™ is the natural evolution of AR glasses providing
the user with the wide range of features and capabilities in a natural glasses
form factor that we believe people will want to wear. From basic text messaging
and answering the phone to overlaying mapping directions, menus, weather, events,
stocks, video conferencing, sports updates, social feeds, bio-metrics and more,
right in front of the user, literally. The intuitive and feature packed Vuzix
Blade OS allows the user to simply and intuitively navigate via simple swipes
and taps, or leverage voice controls and external AI systems. This allows users
to leave their phones in their pockets for most functions and adds the ability
to connect the information being presented to the real world, including that
from cloud based AI platforms such as Amazon Alexa. We believe the Blade Smart
Glasses is the first natural step to replacing the smart phone with a ubiquitous
wearable device for all.
While the Vuzix M300 smart glasses are the device of choice in many enterprise
deployments, there is a sector of business, especially B2C, in which the form
factor is a deterrent. Visual appearance and portability are crucial requirements
when it comes to servicing retail customers in big box retail chains, supermarkets,
restaurants, department stores, and other client facing work environments. The
Vuzix Blade with its fashionable form factor and all-day wear-ability fills
this gap. For the enterprise user, the Vuzix Blade will pair with the smart
phone or connect directly to a Wi-Fi network, allowing for custom secure industrial
applications. Although not as powerful as the stand alone Vuzix M300 smart glasses,
we expect the Vuzix Blade to open new and organic growth opportunities within
the enterprise space.
We are currently also developing a binocular AR Smart Glasses product with
3D and stereo cameras that we expect to introduce sometime in 2019. Future AR
Smart Glasses versions will include increased resolutions and fields of view,
more powerful computers and our thin waveguide see-through optics.
AR Products
AR wearable displays provide the user a live, direct or indirect, view of a
physical, real-world environment whose elements are “augmented”
by computer generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.
Such systems also contain head tracking technology, which enables the user to
look around the environment being viewed by moving his or her head which in
turn sends that information back to the computer which then adjusts the computer-generated
AR image accordingly. AR wearable displays typically include built-in cameras
that can be used to overlay images connected to the real world as well as measure
and track gestures and the physical environment of the AR wearer.
Our AR Smart Glasses are an intelligent wearable computing system specifically
designed to enable computing and connecting AR cloud/internet of things information
and AI to the real world. The embedded cameras in our Smart Glasses are used
for recording and/or seeing the real world. Input and control of our smart glasses
consist of using the wirelessly connected smartphone, gesture sensor, speech
recognition voice control, a series of built in sensors for head motion and
in some cases gesture sensors. We are building an eco-system of developers around
these smart glasses and anticipate that most of the software being developed
can be used on future generations of our smart glasses. Cloud or internet-connected
Smart Glasses applications are being created for manufacturing, medical, field
maintenance and repair, training, gaming and social media uses for both our
monocular and binocular Smart Glasses product lines.
Applications for Smart Glasses
VUZIX Basics™ is a new product line offering that we introduced in December
2017. Vuzix Basics are essential out-of-the-box applications optimized for use
with the growing lineup of Vuzix AR Smart Glasses, including the Vuzix M300
industrial smart glasses and the Vuzix Blade. VUZIX Basics™ are standard
applications, designed to be simple to get started, simple to use, and apps
we believe can immediately provide the fundamental benefits of Smart Glasses
to novice and expert users alike.
The first application in the platform, VUZIX Basics Video, provides remote
telepresence capabilities, otherwise known as see-what-I-see video collaboration,
enabling an operator, mechanic, field technician or consultant to communicate
in a hands-free manner with a remote expert to drive “just in time”
video support of a process or repair. VUZIX Basics Video enables clients to
multiply their expert workforce, eliminate the high costs of travel, improve
customer service levels and equipment operation and accelerate knowledge transfer
and training. We believe the launch of VUZIX Basics Video addresses an underserved
portion of the enterprise space by providing an affordable and standard solution
for expert collaboration to companies worldwide. We are planning to develop
several more VUZIX Basics applications around work instructions and plant floor
operations. VUZIX Basics application are being offered on a subscription basis.
App Store for Smart Glasses
We also have an App Store on our websites where users can download and purchase
Smart Glasses applications, including third party apps. We are fostering the
development of an ecosystem of third party developers to offer applications
and trials for their smart glasses apps, and many will be sold on an industry
common revenue share model. The Vuzix third party developer community will be
able leverage the open Android platform of the Vuzix M300 and the Vuzix Blade
to bring new and creative ideas to life. Supported by Vuzix’ new App Store,
developers can offer or sell their applications to all Vuzix Smart Glasses users,
expanding into an ecosystem of AR applications for real world use today. The
App store supports free, onetime fee, and paid subscription monetization models.
Waveguide Optics and Design Reference Kits
We selectively offer waveguide optics and related coupling optics combined
with our compact Cobra II display engine to form a see-through display module.
We sell our waveguide optic design reference kits to select qualified potential
OEMs/ODMs, which include a Cobra II projector, waveguide optics and associated
electronics, to help these customers evaluate our technologies and to assist
their efforts to build and test new products incorporating our proprietary solutions.
We have shipped these customized modules to numerous customers, some of which
may soon incorporate our products into their own commercial products. Our strategy
for addressing the consumer mass market includes developing partnerships with
both select consumer companies and select high volume production manufacturing
companies.
Custom Solutions and Engineering Solutions
We have in the past provided fully integrated wearable display systems, including
head mounted displays, human computer interface devices, near-eye display related
engineering services and wearable computers to commercial, industrial and defense
customers. As a result of the sale our defense division in June 2012, we no
longer pursue general engineering services work with defense or security organizations.
In February 2017 we entered into a development agreement with Toshiba to create
a customized Window-based USB-C Type C AR Smart Glasses offering for Toshiba,
which is a derivative product of the Vuzix M300 Smart Glasses. Throughout 2017
our design teams created an entirely new Vuzix product for Toshiba. We have
delivered hundreds of engineering and development units and have begun volume
manufacturing for Toshiba to fulfill their initial orders under our 3-year supply
agreement, which was previously announced by Vuzix in December 2017.