The rumor of Apple for the next few years is that of augmented reality glasses. As we saw a few days ago, the company plans to launch glasses with this technology by 2020. Meanwhile, the road is being paved, and an example of this is the latest acquisition of Apple, a Canadian augmented reality startup.
There is no confirmation either from the company or from Apple, but it seems that several employees have moved from the Vrvana facilities in Montreal to California. According to TechCrunch reports, Apple has paid around 30 million dollars for Vrvana. Although Apple has not confirmed the purchase, it has not denied it either.
Why is Vrvana special to be acquired by Apple?
The company has a very curious product in the market, it is Totem, a hybrid helmet that combines virtual reality with augmented reality. But in addition to this, has a hardware capable of tracking not only the position of the head and its movements but also that of the hands to facilitate the manipulation of virtual objects.
We might think that it is simply mixed reality like Microsoft’s HoloLens, but unlike this one, where there is not a transparent glass on which to superimpose elements, but it is an OLED screen that reproduces the exterior and adds virtual objects.
This could be a clue to understand where Apple wants to move in the development of its augmented reality.
In addition to this purchase, the rumors of possible Apple glasses for 2020 and the development of ARKit with iOS 11 … Apple also bought a company specializing in eye tracking a few months ago.
In one way or another, augmented reality is the future of the interaction between technology and the human being, and Apple wants a piece of that cake.
