Seattle, WA-based augmented reality startup Realmax has developed an augmented reality headset that has a wider field of view than any other currently on the market. The headset, called Realmax Qian is also lightweight and tetherless. Realmax demonstrated their glasses at the CES 2019 in Las Vegas.
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With augmented reality technologies, such as the Microsoft HoloLens are being widely used in complex applications such as medical surgeries, so it is crucial to have an AR technology that can cover the whole span of a person’s field of view. For example, during surgery a surgeon do not need to look away from the patient to look at screens on the wall, because information can be displayed right in front of his eyes during the procedure, reports MedGadget.
Qian was co-developed by a former Microsoft executive and a Chinese company. The goggles use stereoscopic 1080p display to deliver a dramatically more powerful AR experience than Microsoft’s HoloLens. It runs on Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 system on chip.
“We’re excited to announce our first production of augmented reality glasses with a field of view of over a hundred degrees. So, this is three or four times bigger than Microsoft’s HoloLens or the Magic Leap,” says Nigel Burton, Chief Technology Officer at Realmax.
Realmax claims to achieve this vastly superior FOV, it only uses some proprietary optics, which involve a combination of so-called waveguide and freeform technology to control how light is beamed out from a source and then reflected back onto the lenses a user looks through.
The company said they’ve had a special interest in medicine since last year. They’re collaborating with a partner to use augmented reality to train doctors using avatar patients in third-world countries and in remote rural locations in performing cataract surgery.
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“I think in the long term this type of technology will be used for different types of remote surgery, and in the shorter term, this year will be training. So, helping doctors to be able to practice different procedures either because they want to improve their skills or they want to go through some sort of trial run,” Burton said.
Realmax wants to work with partners such as, software companies that specialize in healthcare space. The company said it will market the product as a developer version in the third quarter of this year for around $1,500.
