More and more friends

Thank you Joe!!



Hololens Reality News


Based on its continued research, it appears Microsoft recognizes that the next HoloLens needs a wider field of view (FoV). Based on a recently-revealed documentation, the company's research team has found another way to accomplish that objective.

A patent application filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in Dec. 2016 and published on June 21 describes a method for enlarging FoV on a near-eye display using a microelectromechanical (MEMS) laser scanner.

*************

However, one supplier of MEMS laser scanner displays, MicroVision, announced last April that it had secured a $24 million development contract with a major technology company to produce such a display system.


"We believe the LBS display markets have tremendous opportunity for growth, and we are extremely pleased that a major technology company has decided to work with MicroVision and our PicoP scanning technology in the development of its product," said Alexander Tokman, president and CEO of MicroVision. "We believe that our systems expertise and the ability of our patented LBS technology to create a display that produces high resolution images from a low power, small form factor engine were key contributors to winning this business."

Could it be this simple?

Thanks Walt

Amazon... 

If you're relatively new to following MicroVision, you may think this is a gigantic leap. I would understand that, but inclusion in something with Amazon is no leap at all.

If you've been paying attention for a long time, it's seemed that there's been something cooking between MVIS and Amazon. 

Five years ago we saw this prototype at the ASM with an Amazon Kindle Fire tablet. 

I have no idea if laser projection is in here, but it sure is looking good, and if it's for this device, that would be poetic.

 (Remember that MVIS recently sent out higher resolution samples, and from the ASM we learned that the 10 Million exclusive is restricted to the 720P version of the engine.... so it could be that the higher resolution is destined for a device like this.)

Below are videos from the 2013 ASM, where PicoP made an appearance in an Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet.

Message to Shareholders from the CEO

If they were inclined to dilute for the hell of it, we would have had this request long ago.... 

I'm for this. It gives them options to deal with threats, embrace opportunities, enter into strategic partnerships, or simply reward shareholders. (I think a forward split during a good run, with good publicity would be a gift to shareholders.) 



May 18, 2018

Dear Fellow MicroVision Stockholder,

With a little more than six months as CEO of your Company behind me, I am convinced that we are now moving in a direction that will pave the way to achieving profitability at some point during 2019. As we discussed on our May 9 conference call with the investment community, we are on track with our plans, including:

• The recently announced license agreement for display-only products with a leading global technology company that includes the payment of $10 million in license fees this year and provides MicroVision with additional payments for nonrecurring engineering expenses as well as other expected benefits.
• The achievement of key milestones for the $24 million contract we signed in April 2017 with a Tier 1 technology company.
• We made samples of our new MEMS scanner and our new time-of-flight ASIC available for customers’ evaluation.
• Our next-generation analog ASIC has been taped out and we made significant progress on our next-generation digital ASIC.

We believe the markets we are targeting have exceptional growth potential. We also believe our technology and the underlying ability to deliver has never been better and with a very customer focused value-driven concentration of effort, we are positioned to increase shareholder value, but we need your help.

Your Vote is Important to MicroVision’s Success

It is important that you vote your shares at the upcoming 2018 Annual Meeting of Stockholders in favor of each of the proposals, particularly Proposal 3 relating to an increase in our authorized shares. Please note that the approval to increase the number of authorized shares does not mean the shares will be issued, only that they are available if needed. The shares will provide us with the capital flexibility we need as we continue to execute on our strategic plan. Also, it is important to note Proposal 3 requires approval by the holders of a majority of our outstanding common stock, not voting is the same as a vote against the proposal. Your vote is extremely important regardless of the number of shares you own.

While our Board of Directors (the “Board”) unanimously recommended that you vote FOR each of the seven Board nominees and FOR each of the proposals, I would like to take this opportunity to highlight Proposal 3 and discuss why the Board has determined that the proposal is in your best interest.

Proposal 3 asks you to approve an amendment to our charter to increase the authorized number of shares of the Company’s common stock by 50,000,000 to a total of 150,000,000 shares. This proposal benefits our stockholders in the following ways:

• Provides Shares for Future Financings: Without an increase in the number of authorized shares, we expect that the Company will be limited in its ability to raise needed capital in the future. Currently we have approximately 14 million shares of common stock available for issuance. The Company expects to need additional capital to fund its business. If we do not have shares of common stock available to issue, we would be severely restricted in our ability to raise additional funds needed for our continued operations. While the Board is sensitive to the dilution that results from issuing additional shares of common stock and will continue to weigh that concern, it believes the stockholders will be best served by the Company having shares of common stock available for financings or other transactions that it determines are worth pursuing.

• Provides Flexibility: The Board would like to increase the number of authorized shares of common stock to provide the Company with flexibility to issue shares of common stock for general corporate purposes, which could include, among other uses, financings, as discussed above, as well as for strategic partnering arrangements, equity incentive plans, acquisitions of assets or businesses, stock splits or stock dividends. The availability of additional authorized shares of common stock would allow the Company to accomplish these goals, and other business and financial objectives, in the future without the delay needed for authorizing shares for those purposes at the time. Increasing the number of authorized shares at this time does not mean we have current plans to issue these shares, only that they are available if needed by the company.

• A Leading Independent Proxy Advisory Firm Recommends Approval of Proposal 3. Glass Lewis & Co., a leading institutional proxy advisory firm, recommends voting for Proposal 3 and concludes that is prudent for the Company to have additional common shares available for issuance and the request to increase the authorized common shares is “reasonable.”

My bet on "Black Box"

This is just an educated guess. I readily admit that I could be very wrong about this. This is just dot connecting from publicly available information.

This is what I suspect and why.

---

In the fall we were told about the "Black Box" project that once the development was complete, we would be able to sell the results to anyone.

If someone is paying for development, it's exceptionally odd that they would allow anyone else to use what they paid to develop -- unless of course they would benefit if anyone else used it.

So who would benefit from anyone's use of it? Companies that do things on a variety of devices -- 

There are various common computer operating systems, stationary and mobile: Windows, Linux, iOS and Android (google)

What services are likely to be used on all operating systems? and are "Tier 1"

Google
Facebook
Amazon

So, that's my short list. 

It doesn't matter what operating system you're using... people will still use all three of these. You would connect to Google if you used an Amazon device or to Amazon if you used a Google device. Same for Facebook. No matter who produces the device, you would still use the other service -- and in my mind, that's the only way you'd pay to develop some hardware, and then allow (and encourage) your development partner to sell it to anyone and everyone they want to.

If you add other system software to it you add Microsoft;  Apple is also doing some interesting things with AR and sharing it, they're opening up. 

So Microsoft and Apple are also contenders, but less, in my mind than the other three.

So, go back to look at the 4th Quarter Conference call. (delivered during Q1)  

What are all of those companies working on? (all five). 

Smart homes -- The description delivered during the conference call sounds like that. Review the Question and Answer portion of that CC:

Microvision Q1 2018
Perry Mulligan / Q1 Conference Call

It is. So the capabilities I'm describing in this perceptive element exist within the context of the 1-meter, 1.5-meter interactive display, the 10-meter display and the 30-meter display and perhaps the -- sorry, not display, LiDAR. Perhaps the best way to think of these, Henry, is to think of them as having sort of different levels of vocabulary. The things that the 1 meter display -- or the 1 meter LiDAR will have to recognize will be a relatively small number of things, gestures, point, touch, compression, squeezing the picture, flipping the page. And the 10-meter LiDAR, you can see how that number of things that would have to be recognized will increase for the device to be able to send a message that says it's your child walking towards an open door versus your dog running through a dog port would be an example of how those differences Maybe it's you walking down the hall past the bookcase, so don't turn the lights on for the bookshelf, or your wife walking towards the bookcase to get a book, go turn the lights on there and illustrate it. So those -- you can see that the language or the vocabulary perhaps of the device would increase and then within the automotive space would increase again.

....think of our display engine embedded in your voice-only device. So that as you shave in the morning not only do you listen to the news, you see it displayed on the washroom wall, and that becomes a little bit more meaningful experience. As you walk down the hall towards the kitchen, our sensing device knows it's you that's walking down the hall. It adjusts the coffee and turns the lights on appropriately. And then an interactive display that's invisible, but when you call it up, it comes out as an Alexa-type device or something of that nature that allows you to interact with it because of the sensing capabilities, gesture recognition and then disappears when it's not required. So we really see this as sort of a suite of solution that helps AI platforms with their user interface. 

So, look at what is happening with these companies:

Google  Integrating Smart Home Devices --- Clearly designed so that people can integrate google Smart Home into OTHER manufacturers devices. This is thorough explanation of how to do it.

GOOGLE SMART HOME

Amazon Connect your devices to Alexa  At CES I had a very interesting conversation with one of the people doing Amazon Alexa certification. She reported that anyone can make a device that uses Alexa, but they must submit it to be an "approved" Alexa using device and sell it on Amazon. 

Facebook Portal  Remember they had a privacy snafu, and delayed the announcement. 

Visit an Amazon Smart Home (It's on my near-term agenda)

Cortana Smart Home

Apple Home Kit

Amazon Smart Home Devices (clearly willing to work with anyone)
USA TODAY
C|Net

Hints about "machine learning"

 there are solutions out there today that do 3D scanning, perhaps as an example, for facial recognition. They require high compute energy and use approximately 30,000 points to do that calculation. Our range of solutions will provide between 5 million and 20 million points per second of resolution in the 10-meter space. So the density of the information we have at the sensor allows us to make simple messaging analytics or messaging content that enables users to do so much more with the device than simply trying to plug them with this plethora of data. It is almost diametrically opposed to the way most entities are solving sensing applications today. Almost everybody is trying diligently to get more information from the sensor, pass it down the pipe to a centralized processor that allows it to do a calculation and figure out what's going on. We have so much information at the sensor. We have the luxury of sending messaging, which just makes it much easier for the entire system to be responsive. And it will be a shame not to capture that.

Alexa, Apple, Google.... Black box?

Have stuff to say, but the kid needs a ride.

CC Impressions

CNBC

Amazon wants to show you how much you can rely on its Alexa voice assistant to control everything in your home, from thermostats to TVs.

The company announced Wednesday it's partnering with homebuilder Lennar to create "Amazon Experience Centers" — model homes containing built-in Alexa-controlled appliances — in hopes of persuading homeowners and homebuyers to embed Amazon services into their houses.

Lennar is outfitting model homes with TVs connected to Amazon's Fire TV system, buttons that can reorder goods from Amazon, and Alexa-enabled products that allow customers to control the lights, TV, shades and other appliances with their voices. Customers can tour the homes in cities around the U.S. to get an idea of how they work.

Apple has taken a similar approach. It has already teamed with homebuilders to create model new homes with HomeKit-ready products that can be controlled from an iPhone or iPad with Apple's Siri assistant. Brookfield Residential is one such homebuilder.

For Amazon, it's another example of how badly it wants to be in your home. Doing so lets it collect valuable data on how you purchase goods.

Apple, Amazon and Google are all racing to get smart assistants into your homes. Most households probably only have room for one of those — so getting customers into the ecosystem when they're buying a home might keep them for the long haul.

( I have scraped this to not lose it.)

Now, imagine that robots like this can recognize you.

Say the grocery store brand you usually shop has them...

Say you live in Seattle and shop at Safeway. You have a few items you regularly head in for. 

But this week you're feeling prosperous, and head to Newport Rhode Island for a week-long sailing charter.

You go to the Safeway in Newport, and a little bot like this recognizes you, and knows what you usually head to Safeway for.  It knows you're not at home.

It wheels over, greets you by name, and says "Would you like help finding the tenderloin and Grey Goose?"

Hitachi Robot

Spectrum & CC

Henry James Okay. Okay. And then one last question. I think -- or at least I've read or heard that you guys have at least a sort of display product for project and sense at the same time. I don't know if you can tell us anything about that.

Perry M. Mulligan - MicroVision, Inc. - CEO & Director

That is our interactive display, Henry.

So think of the scenario -- and when we talk about the I/O for AI, I'm not trying to be cute with acronyms. But if you think of being in the home environment and we talk about a suite of solutions,

think of our display engine embedded in your voice-only device. So that as you shave in the morning not only do you listen to the news, you see it displayed on the washroom wall, and that becomes a little bit more meaningful experience. 

As you walk down the hall towards the kitchen, our sensing device knows it's you that's walking down the hall. It adjusts the coffee and turns the lights on appropriately. 

And then an interactive display that's invisible, but when you call it up, it comes out as an Alexa-type device or something of that nature that allows you to interact with it because of the sensing capabilities, gesture recognition and then disappears when it's not required. 

So we really see this as sort of a suite of solution that helps AI platforms with their user interface.

Scary

Near Eye Display.

Pico Projection.

Interactive Pico Projection

LiDAR

Whatever the "Black Box" is.