The AR Show: Guido Groet (Luxexcel) on Solving Prescription for Fashionable AR Smartglasses | Otter.ai

The AR Show: Guido Groet (Luxexcel) on Solving Prescription for Fashionable AR Smartglasses

Jason McDowall1h 2min

Jason McDowall

00:03

Welcome to the AR show right dive deep into augmented reality with a focus on the technology, the use cases and the people behind them. I'm your host Jason McDowall. today's conversation is with Guido Grote, the Chief Strategy Officer of Lux XL, a company that is able to 3d print optical quality lenses for smart eyewear. Earlier in his career, we don't work for many years in both Europe and the USA for technology giant asml, which is a world leader in semiconductor equipment. He's held VP positions in finance, business development, m&a, and strategy development. He was also the CFO and then the CEO of a venture backed company in disruptive high tech manufacturing technologies. Now at Lux XL, Guido is in charge of all commercial and strategic aspects of 3d printing of smart eyewear lenses. Lux itself has been in the news recently for the partnership with Loomis and wave optics, we're together, we're able to encase the waveguides within 3d printed prescription lenses. In this conversation, we don't talk about the challenges of finding product market fit, particularly for technologies that don't perfectly fit the industry's preconceived notion of how things have been done, or shouldn't be done. We get into the meat of the technology and where it goes from here. And he also shares his perspective on how and where smart glasses will find early success. Today,

Speaker 1

01:17

nobody wears smart glasses in everyday life, right? Maybe people tried it with Google Glasses at the time, but it didn't work out too well. And nobody's wearing Microsoft HoloLens in their everyday life, right? Maybe in the enterprise environment, but not, you know, at home or in the streets. So I think what the industry needs is we need to devise out there that people are willing to wear, so it needs to be first of all fashionable, and have some functionality. And what I find in this in this whole industry is everybody's extremely focused on field of view, functionality and all these other things. I think what we need is we need basic functionality that is fashionable. And the thing that will probably convince consumers that this is a serious thing.

Jason McDowall

01:59

As reminder, you can find the show notes for this and other episodes at our website, the AR show calm, let's dive in. We don't you've worked and lived all over Europe and the US in all that back and forth. Have you ever had any trouble at the airport?

Speaker 1

02:16

It's funny that you asked that you must have known this. We all started traveling again. As you know, I think we have to get used to it again. I'm a music player. I love playing on kind of instruments, principally the the saxophone. However, it turns out not to be a very convenient instrument to take with you when you're on a business trip. So actually, I I downsized, I got myself a little harmonica, you know, like a blues heart that you can keep playing in the palm of your hands. And I take that with me when I go on a business trip. So I show up at this airport the other day in Switzerland. And I put my backpack Yeah, on the on the security belt and take up on liquids and all that usual stuff and walk through the gate and go to the other side both for my bag. And all of a sudden the huge noise starts up. Now there's the blinking lights and the siren and there's two security guards police officers that stick comes down behind me I go What did I do? And then I see from the distance I see the screen if the guy sitting there right and I see that there is this symbol of a GM blinking. Okay, so let's take out my back and they represent it and they they pull out my my harmonica, right. And then this quiet right. So the two police officers disappear. I'm bearish that the guy yeah, the security guy stands out with this harmonica enhancing goes up. Okay. He needs to find a way out of this. And he goes, Okay, well, I guess our AI system recognizes as a loader for a handgun. Ammunition clip. Yeah, for a handgun. And that's why the alarm went off. But he stood there trying to find a solution. So he hands me a harmonica. He goes, you have to play it though.

Unknown Speaker

04:02

So I play a little tune. And there's all these other people's security standing there and

Speaker 1

04:10

I went from a regular anonymous traveler now went to a potential terrorist. I went to a world famous music player in security.

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