With Kokomo VR assembly software program, Canon takes a step away from its {hardware} roots • robotechcompany.com

Canon has an extended and deep historical past of being a {hardware} producer. Most customers understand it finest as a digital camera producer, however the firm has an extended, deep and illustrious historical past in medical, workplace tools, and different imaging functions.

Throughout the pandemic, lots of its enterprise shifted. Folks stopped going to workplaces. Sporting occasions have been shut down. And whereas the medical business was booming, Canon as an organization wanted to rethink its mission and imaginative and prescient: What does an imaging firm do in a world the place individuals have a need to attach, however are unable to go away their houses whereas a lethal virus rages around the globe?

At CES 2023, the corporate confirmed off its imaginative and prescient for the long run — a imaginative and prescient that appears quite a bit much less hardware-y than you’ll anticipate from the 85-year-old firm that has historically made all of its cash from making issues with buttons.

A rag-tag bunch of Canon veterans took on the problem and created Kokomo, a VR assembly software program bundle that, in essence, makes real-time 3D video calling a actuality.

Customers don a VR headset and level a smartphone at themselves. The software program scans your face, and creates a photo-real 3D avatar of you and the individual you might be calling. It makes use of the movement sensors within the headset and the digital camera to seize your avatar, shifting you right into a photo-realistic area, and increase, you might be just about current with a colleague, member of the family or pal. The know-how to scan your face is much like the tech utilized by iOS’s face ID, doing a quick pre-capture course of. From there, your face’s form and texture may be proven off contained in the video calls.

A fast scan with the Kokomo companion app captures your face so it may be proven to your pals in VR. Picture Credit score: Canon

Essentially the most fascinating factor to notice in regards to the above paragraph is the dearth of Canon merchandise. Historically, Canon’s software program options have centered on enhancing and facilitating the usage of its {hardware} merchandise. The corporate makes neither smartphones nor VR headsets, nonetheless, so this transfer represents a significant departure from its roots.

robotechcompany.com sat down with the staff that led the event of Kokomo to determine the way it took place, and the place Canon goes because it re-imagines its personal future.

“That is representing a really thrilling new innovation for Canon – but in addition a really new enterprise path for Canon, as properly,” stated Jon Lorentz, one of many co-creators of the Kokomo resolution. “As you already know, historically, Canon may be very a lot tied to our {hardware} merchandise. Once we introduced AMLOS at CES final 12 months, it was about innovating do business from home. Our job [with Kokomo] is to innovate life at residence, and that’s the place this undertaking got here from. Once we began, we have been within the thick of COVID, and there weren’t lots of methods for individuals to get linked. The underlying premise for what we created was to be an answer to that. Kokomo is a strategy to allow individuals to be there once they couldn’t.”

The staff’s aim was to create an answer that takes the expertise past a telephone name, a FaceTime name or a Zoom name – to really feel current slightly than to only take a look at one another on a display. A worthy pursuit in a world the place journey is proscribed and display fatigue is actual. However how is Canon’s resolution for bringing individuals right into a digital world going to perform that?

“We help a lot of the standard client VR headsets available in the market to allow individuals to have interaction in immersive calls, as we’re calling them. In these calls, individuals can interact. They’re dynamic, in dwelling, respiration environments. You possibly can obtain a companion app on a cell phone, which lets the individual you speak to see you from head to toe,” explains Lorentz. “No extra legless avatars. No extra questioning what somebody is definitely gesturing. And you’ll really see the opposite individual. You may be in the decision, slightly than on the decision.”

Under is an in-depth interview with Kokomo co-creators Jon Lorentz, Ray Konno and Jason Williams. The interview has been edited for readability and size.

A telephone and a VR headset are all you must use Canon’s Kokomo. Picture Credit score: Canon

robotechcompany.com: Why is Canon excited in software program? Isn’t {that a} step away from its {hardware} roots?

Jon Lorentz (JL): At our core, Canon is an imaging firm, and that’s actually our specialty. Kokomo is making use of that specialty to the software program slightly than beginning with our {hardware} first. We see that the power to step right into a name is admittedly moving into an imaging sensor. It’s about taking that picture sensor knowledge, after which making use of it to another person’s visible discipline.

Clearly, there are lots of particulars behind that, however our core is imaging excellence. As you usher in mesh actuality and digital actuality, you must have a sure degree of meshing: it actually must match up. In any other case, you’re going to really feel disconnected – it’s not going to really feel pure. The identical goes for the environments; they aren’t static, from one other digital place. We’ve captured real-life environments, and introduced them into VR. You actually really feel such as you’re within the dynamic, dwelling locations.