The Tech Chef Podcast dives deep into the world of augmented reality with Brian Hamilton, the VP of Sales and Marketing at Digilens. He introduces Argo, their innovative smart glasses designed specifically for the hospitality industry. The conversation highlights how Argo stands out with its unique waveguide technology that minimizes light leakage, allowing for better human interaction while using the glasses. The episode details the real-world applications of AR in hospitality, from enhancing customer service to improving logistics and training. Brian emphasizes the importance of human connection in hospitality, showcasing how Argo facilitates this by allowing users to maintain eye contact while accessing information. This episode serves as a crucial resource for hospitality leaders looking to embrace technology to enhance guest experiences and operational efficiency, making it clear that the future of hospitality is intertwined with advancements in AR technology.

Takeaways:

• In the podcast, they discuss how augmented reality is changing the hospitality industry in many exciting ways.
• Brian shares insights on how Digilens' Argo smart glasses are leading in AR technology for business applications.
• The conversation emphasizes the importance of human interaction while using augmented reality in customer service roles.
• They touch on the future of AR and its potential to enhance training and operational efficiency in various sectors.
• Skip and Brian explore the unique features of the Argo glasses that set them apart from competitors in the market.
• The podcast highlights the strategic partnership between Digilens and Magicgate, focusing on innovations for the hospitality industry.

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This is Brian Hamilton, the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Digilens and you're listening to Skip on the Tech Chef Podcast.

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Welcome to the Tech Chef Podcast.

This is the show where innovation meets hospitality.

We encourage you to join us each week as we explore the cutting edge of technology in the hospitality industry, diving into the latest trends, tools and strategies that are revolutionizing restaurants, hotels, resorts and entertainment venues.

This is your host, Skip Kimple and every week we feature insightful conversations with tech pioneers, operators and thought leaders.

The Tech Chef Podcast serves up actionable insights to help you stay ahead in a fast evolving digital landscape.

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This is the Tech Chef Podcast.

We might need to start calling this show Partner Tuesday because each week leading up to Mirtech we're unveiling new strategic partnerships designed to bring you game changing technology solutions you probably didn't even know existed.

Last week we introduced WEART Haptics, a breakthrough in haptic technology that's redefining immersive training and simulation.

This week we're excited to announce our latest partner Digilens, a leader in enterprise grade augmented reality smart glasses that are poised to transform the hospitality industry.

Joining us today is Brian Hamilton, VP of Sales and Marketing at Digilens.

Brian was brought on to spearhead the launch of their Argo Smart glasses and expand their waveguide licensing business, accelerating market growth following a successful fundraising round with Samsung Mobile.

A recognized pioneer in deep tech, Brian has founded three groundbreaking companies and played a key role in scaling the first commercial deployments of XR and spatial computing.

His work spans 50 countries and 20 industries, making him one of the top experts in in driving market adoption for emerging technologies.

This is a conversation you really don't want to miss.

We are diving into the cutting edge technology behind Argo, smart glasses and exploring real world applications already making an impact in hospitality.

Get ready to see the future of hospitality through a whole new lens.

We have a special guest on the show today, we have Brian Hamilton from Digilens.

Brian, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you Skip.

It's an honor to be here.

Digilens.

Most of our listeners have no idea what Digilens is, who they are.

Give us a little bit about the background of Digilens, some of your background as well.

Great.

So Digilens is a very interesting company.

The company's been around for 15 years trying to solve some of the most hard physics and chemistry problems in waveguides.

For those of you that know what, don't know what waveguides are.

Waveguides are sheets of glass or plastic that basically enable an image to come to your eye when it's powered by a light engine.

So we take a nanomaterials approach to creating waveguides so that we can create the brightest and the most efficient, the most transparent and the least iglow, what we call a light side leakage in the world.

For our displays, which I happen to be powering many of the top companies in the world for the future of their AR and AR delivery systems and heads up displays.

We have three lines of our business.

We teach others to be able to manufacture these wave guides and projectors and boards and products like Argo, which we'll talk about in a minute.

All over the world.

We also are able to support custom NRA or non recurring engineering programs where we can support anyone out there with a vision to be able to create their version and their specification for the future heads up displays and wearables.

I happen to lead sales and marketing for Digilens and have a pretty eclectic background in this space and we've been studying the space for many years.

So there's many things to do as well as what not to do.

And I think when everybody embarks on this journey, looking at the past and learning from it is really important for the future utilization.

I've been a repeat founder and been very excited to participate in the journey to the future of the next evolution of mobility.

So what's fascinating is my path to digitalens and Argo more specifically had a magic leap device played around with Hololens, dealt in the enterprise, Arkansas world for a while with those devices.

Believe it or not, they've dried up and they are no longer around.

So through talking to some of my colleagues in the enterprise market space, Argo came up.

As a matter of fact, I saw Argo back at AWE last year.

Very intrigued by the device.

But once I started to hear it more positively endorsed by some of the enterprise players, I really took a keen interest in it because I was looking for that AR solution for hospitality.

And unfortunately some of the solutions that we're banking on, we're no longer there.

So let's go into the Argo device.

What makes Digilens Argo unique compared to some of the other AR smart glasses out there on the marketplace?

Now, what's out there is probably just commercial at this point, but let's dig into that a little bit.

Absolutely.

So Argo is our flagship product.

It's an all in one device that's a complete heads up display.

Utilizing our wave guides, it's controlled four different ways.

One is by voice.

There's a scroll wheel for tactical use.

You can use head gestures and also hand tracking.

What makes our device really unique versus the rest of the industry, by the way, much respect to the rest of the industry, each one of these evolutions with Microsoft and Magic Leap and all these other great products that have been in the market has been a stepping stone and has actually facilitated the successful next evolution of these types of products.

But what makes our device really special is number one on the wave guide side, we're able to have what we call the least eye glow or light side leakage.

If you take a look and you put on most devices, you'll see light coming out from the eyes.

And not only can this be a security risk, but also it also can, if you're doing things like military and government applications, it actually can put you in harm's way.

And it also, from a hospitality and QSR perspective, it also allows you to have more of a human to human interaction.

Rather than staring at somebody who's in a pair of glasses with light coming out and hitting them in the face, we're able to control that light better than any other product in the market.

The other thing that makes it very unique is the transparency.

It's the ability to actually see the eye while you're engaging with the human.

We all look at human to human interactions.

We've worked with some companies that have dealt with hearing impairments and in medical and different environments where that human touch and that human interaction is so important.

So being able to have somebody behave in their natural state in a pair of glasses is really, really critical.

And I think that is a key element to what sets us apart.

Also what sets us apart is our partnership with Qualcomm.

We have access to the chipsets which allows us to extend the source code so we can maximize and customize on applications.

We also have complete control of our supply chain.

We look at the projectors.

If projectors in this space are very difficult, there's a lot of different projectors out there.

But you have to deal with end of life and other companies and and other products that may or may not be fully optimized for the display world.

So we've actually created the world's smallest L cost projector the size of a U.S.

quarter that actually gives us the ability to have a very micro true glasses approach form factor.

So it truly looks like a pair of glasses.

It's maybe it's not meant to be a, you know, it's made to be a true industrial tool that's really focused on the enterprise and industrial.

We also have all many certifications to this device, IP65 mil spec, ANSI rating.

These devices are actually made out of magnesium so you can actually drop them on the ground.

There's no issue.

You can wear them in different forms of ppe.

You could wear them just under a baseball cap or just regularly right there on your head.

So the ergonomics, the 48 megapixel camera we have in the front is, allows you to have the best, you know, one to one experience with the types of use cases you may be engaging in and the ability to have an all in one device, no tethers, everything's completely in the device and it allows you to be able to scale into the enterprise and work with the existing platforms and infrastructure that's in the Enterprise as it sits in the Android frameworks.

Yeah, that's one thing that people complain about with the magic leap device is the puck that you had to either hang from your shoulder or you know, put in your pocket or do something with it.

But this, I was so impressed the first time I opened up my pelican case with the Argo glass.

First of all, very good presentation.

But pulling that thing out, I gotta tell you, it's almost over engineered.

It's got so many features built into it.

Some of that being, you know, AI, the wireless, maybe talk about some of those aspects as well.

That's a great, great point there.

Skip the main focus for what we're doing on the AI side.

I'll start on the AI side is we have a great Partnership with Google, which is published and public now and will be more coming on that soon.

We've been able to port over Gemini natively to the device.

So just if you're used to talking to Siri or your phones or you know, hey Argo, tell me what I'm looking at.

You know, hey, you're looking at a water bottle or when we were in Las Vegas at CES this year, hey, we're looking out into the desert or we're looking out to the strip of Las Vegas.

It's being able to use, basically be able to use the displays and the whole processing to be able to identify and look at a true spatial computing kind of platform utilizing AI and those functions.

So there's a lot, like you said, there's a lot of a power built into Argo.

It's got the top processors, top cameras, it's got onboard memory, it's very flexible in terms of connectivity, whether it be WI fi and Bluetooth enabled, as well as being able to plug into 5G modems and dongles, as well as working on a 5G head strap and extended battery pack around the back.

So we also are planning future derivative devices as well to support all different types of use cases.

This is the industrial tool that is the high end version of this type of modular based products and it's here now.

We're live with the certifications and we're getting tremendous traction in the market.

And one of the other things that's really important about our company is we're very hands on.

So we like to go as deep as we can with our partners, learn about their use cases, make sure we're holding their hands through the first proof of concept work.

So we invest heavily at the offset to make sure that the partner is successful, that their questions are answered, supported and the product is a very high end product for the, for the, for this category that I think we wanted to start there and kind of work backwards and reduce the sensors and reduce the amount of things in it as we go forward.

It also has a rail bar on the top and the rail bar is really unique because if you have any use cases that require say thermal or if you want to put a time of flight sensor sensor on it to be able to do hand track, do spatial computing, you've got a platform now where you can really customize at the sensory level.

So what that means is based on your use case there may be a different configuration for the hospitality industry that would be in say oil and gas or another industry or defense.

So it's very flexible, it's designed for flexibility and maximum value for the user.

User.

It's interesting when you talk about the rail system.

You had mentioned that to me in Vegas when we met up and I had to come back home and look to see if my Argo had a rail system on.

Sure enough, it did.

That made me realize the expandability and the capabilities that this thing could take and the applications like you said, based upon the industry you can make put on other attachments that make more sense.

Now back to you, your enterprise introduction of this product and the difference between a consumer based product.

Perfect example once again in Vegas when you mentioned with Gemini overlooking the desert and having to identify options, we were looking in full bright sunlight into the sun almost out in the desert and this device was able to distinguish and discern the, the objects that we were looking at despite all of the other noise from the, from the light, which you would not find in a consumer product at all.

Yeah, I mean that's a great point.

We set that demo up in Vegas looking out into the brightest sun we could find for that very reason, because seeing is believing.

It's very difficult for people that don't experience to be able to see what a true device will work in all different type of environments.

Our waveguide technology, the display technology actually has gone up over 6,000 nits.

So again, we have the brightest devices.

So just on translation on nets, basically what that means is it's super, super bright.

And it's so bright that we tell people sometimes when you're indoors to turn it down, not because you're going to hurt, but because what we want to do is give them the best possible experience.

But that brightness and the way that we've been able to set this up allows you to be able to work in all different environments.

Hot, cold, sunny, rainy, inside, outside.

And we've actually worked in pitch black dark as well on some use cases where, where people are doing things in defense.

We started our conversation a good six, maybe eight months ago when I first started to dig in a little deeper about the Argo device because my use case scenario is very different.

The hospitality industry QSR.

I see a massive opportunity for QSRs and I happen to know a few players out there that are already using AR in the QSR market space.

So let's talk about AR and hospitality.

First of all, why should hospitality leaders be paying attention to augmented reality?

That's A great question.

I think it's more than just augmented reality too.

I think it's augmented reality, it's AI, it's all the different elements of future mobility.

If you think about QSR and you think about hospitality, it's actually some of the more advanced supply chain, it's more at some of the most advanced customer service loyalty programs.

If you think about hospitality in particular, you know you book your hotels based on where you usually book your hotels because of the perks you, you have that interface on a customer success level and service level.

I think hospitality is, is actually an amazing set of use cases because you're dealing with logistics, customer success, maintenance and repair, being able to manage buildings and locations, inspections, looking at use cases around things like doordash integration, making sure orders are completely handled the right way and actually put together the right way and validated training, another big one, being able to work with people that are servicing their customers in QSR and also in hospitality training, getting them in all different types of scenarios, giving them the opportunity to have an on demand opportunity for knowledge base.

So imagine walking up to your concierge and saying hey, you know, let you know what, what am I looking at to go to for dinner tonight?

And somebody's got a pair of glasses on, they're like hey, you know there's this great restaurant down the street that is unique and just started and be able to start giving recommendations on that or being able to also look at the infrastructure and supply chain.

I think the infrastructure and supply chain, it's all about maximization of operations and margin and actually being able to service more customers.

And the other big one we've seen in quick, quick serve restaurants has also been how do we advance the loyalty programs that are in place.

Like if you ever go through a drive thru or you show up at a quick serve restaurant dining facility, you know, one of the first questions are often asked is hey, are you in the loyalty program?

Would you like to use your loyalty card today or identify yourself?

And most times you're in a super rush and you say no because you're just in a hurry.

So imagine if there was an optionality scenario where you could opt in rather than having to punch in for identification and be able to start now really focusing on the loyalty, the residual customers, the upsells and also look at the maximization of offers and marketing around, around the customer.

So there's a tremendous amount of use cases here, especially in logistics and supply chain where you can look to change the, change the operations to be more.

Efficient Brian, great place to take a little pause because the quick interruption that we have here and the message coming right your way.

Right now folks, a little sneak peek regarding what you can experience in Las Vegas at Mirtech 25.

And yes, we will have the Digilens Argo lens and smart glasses with us.

Hold on, we'll be right back.

Hey, since I have you here, if you're headed to Murtech in Vegas this year, March 10th through 12th, you gotta swing by Magic Gate's experience zone.

We're talking next level restaurant tech, VR training that actually works, AR remote support that makes troubleshooting a breeze and some seriously cool data tools to keep your ops running smooth.

Plus you can mess around with futuristic stuff like augmented reality, virtual reality and haptic devices.

It's all hands on, no boring demos, just straight up cool tech that you need to see.

Come check it out.

Okay, now we're going to get super interesting.

We got really technical in the beginning and now we're working our way back.

We talked about use case scenarios within hospitality.

Now people are probably sitting out there.

You mentioned something about training before.

In ar, most people are considering VR for their training modules.

Let's talk about AR versus VR.

Why augmented reality?

That's a great question.

I'm a firm believer that not all technology fits as all use cases.

I actually believe that sometimes tablets are great, sometimes a VR headset gives you a deep immersive experience.

But the reality for augmented reality, if you think about the difference between AR and VR, VR is like sitting in the movie theater where you're in the dark theater and you're looking and you've got your screen in front of you and you're not aware of your surroundings.

Some people feel maybe a little bit nauseous when they're engaged.

I don't know if there's a specific demo out there that, where you ride a roller coaster.

And I never get sick on anything.

But on that one I was thinking about it.

There's an opportunity to actually interface with the real world versus being in a specific environment where you can interface.

And when you're talking about safety and people moving around and also contextual basis here, context is really, really important.

So if you're out in the real world and you're, and you're interfacing with customers or you're doing training, oftentimes that training is not one dimensional where you go into your cave and you go into your VR headset and you do your, you know, you do your immersive experience which is for your Mind because it's you engaged in that experience.

What augmented reality allows you to do is be able to bring in all the different people around you, the environment, the contextuality of, of your setting.

And we all know that nothing's absolute.

And there's going to be different scenario outcomes based on different training scenarios based on different questions.

It's going to be kind of, if you think about it, a workflow.

It's a different type of workflow.

So being able to be able to have this opportunity to be able to interface with the real world in the real environment and actually be present while you're engaging and be able to make it a one to many experiences versus more of a one to one experience.

So we talk training.

Do you think that AR is a great use case for frontline hospitality roles.

On the training side?

I think there could be.

I think you could.

The other thing that you can get is real time training and upskilling of workers.

So it doesn't have to be just a course based scenario.

I think the opportunity is also to have remote experts being able to go quickly talk to somebody on your glasses and say it may not be right in front of the customer, but to get that information in real time.

So excuse me, I'll go talk to the manager or I'll get, I'll get some information for you and you step away, you know, and then have somebody be able to come into your situation and upskill you in real time, you know, and that goes for every customer service kind of example.

I remember calling one of the airlines a couple days ago to change a flight and I had to do the same process twice.

One time it took me one minute, the next time it took me 17 minutes to get it done.

Same exact process.

And so that standardization process is very, very important.

And I think you can use the real world as a training ground in ar.

And again, if you're doing it in an environment, in a training center, under controlled scenarios, that's a different type of use case.

But also there's an opportunity for actually learning while working and knowing that you have an angel on your shoulder at times to help.

Or maybe it's a workflow, a training kind of situation where if we had a process or a logistics process and you go through a step by step set of instructions.

If you just do the step by step set of instructions, you may not realize that there needs to be a training change that needs to happen until maybe 10 employees go through it 100 times and they realize that step three is causing an extra amount of time or an inefficiency.

And the only way to correct that and to be able to understand, even diagnose that is oftentimes going through a digital experience where you're actually documenting it in real time.

So I think it's a very powerful tool for training and I think it also allows you to do more just in time training, not just in the classroom, with no pressure when you're not sitting in front of the customer and be able to start providing another level of upskilling so that every worker can start to do more and have more access to the knowledge bases and things in real time.

Well, also it's a one hand device.

You put it on your face.

It's not the distinction is between that and a VR headset where you're, you know, you're using two hands to put it on and once again you're immersive.

It's a one hand device.

So throwing that on, doing a quick session, quick training session is pretty impactful.

All right, so lots of good use case scenarios for hospitality.

Obviously I was drawn to your product because of this and the capabilities it had.

So let's talk about the future of ar.

Where do you see AR landing in the next five years?

I mean it's made such great advancements up until now and in a very rapid form.

Curious your thoughts of where it's headed.

I appreciate that question, Skip.

It's.

I think AR has expanded when people talk about augmented reality.

It used to mean one thing and now it means many things.

I think people are throwing a lot of different terminologies.

You probably hear acronyms all the time.

AR XR, Mr.

All these Rs, right.

And people kind of I glaze over and it's like throwing a big bowl of spaghetti together.

What I think is going to happen and what we're starting to see the trends on right now is number one, you're going to see you take a look at OpenXR from Google.

You're going to start to see a lot more open platforms for the development and the advancement to the way that applications are being built in augmented reality.

And I think you'll start to see that in the next couple years where it's a lot more applications.

Instead of building your application just for that one specific headset or use case, you can now make your application more open to be able to be interfaced with the core systems.

I also see it going more deeper with deeper integrations and utilization.

You've got to embrace things like AR really needs to cross the chasm in the IT world.

So when you deploy these types of devices, it's like deploying a phone or a tablet.

You've got to have a mobile device management platform, you've got to have the right cybersecurity in place, oftentimes compliance.

So I think we're going to get work over the next couple of years we're going to see a lot more sophistication in the total AR solution rather than this fragmented approach of here's my device, here's my platform, we got to put this together and do all this work.

So I really start, I'm starting to see a trend towards streamlining.

I also see the opportunity for AI to really become the next level embedded here with being able to actually collect data from the real world that can now be interfaced in real time with the human brain through these types of deliveries and be able to start mapping and doing things around the world where we're getting a different view of the world and we're starting to leave behind digital messages, digital objects.

Imagine showing up at your Starbucks and your friend left you a note and you pop your glasses on, you see the note.

Being able to leave things in the real world almost like breadcrumbs of data and breadcrumbs of interaction.

So I see a bright future for ar, but I do believe that there's going to be a lot of change coming and I believe there's going to be a lot more in depth integrations.

But I also think the definition of what we think AR is, is going to change, is going to continue to change as we go step forward into the next, the future of mobility.

I can't wait to ride this path with you.

So on that point, just this morning, we recently announced our strategic partnership between Magic8 and Digilens.

I know, I'm excited.

But what excites you the most about partnering with us and how do you see that benefiting the hospital hospitality segment?

Wonderful question, Skip.

And I gotta tell you, the day I met you, I'm like, all right, not only is there a successful company that understands the depths of QSR and hospitality, that was the first thing you, you got, your team gets it, you understand the challenges that exist, you understand how to add value to the equation.

My biggest excitement point was we weren't really looking at the QSR and hospitality industries till we met you.

Frankly, we were focused on industrial and manufacturing and all these things.

And the one thing that Magic Gate did for us is you helped us open our eyes that the same use cases or Similar flavors of the same use cases are extremely valuable.

We find this all the time.

There's all these really interesting different types of verticals that come to us and we're like, how can that be relevant?

But then you find this massive supply chain thing that needs to be fixed, or you find a training challenge, or you find a standardization challenge.

We were really excited to partner with you.

Your group has a very long track record selling successfully the Magic Leap devices, the Hololens devices.

So you also have a lot of experience in understanding how to interface these types of devices with customers.

So to me, Magic 8 is a one stop shop opportunity for us in these industries because we have industry subject matter expertise now with the teams.

We also have device expertise and technology expertise and we bundle that up and now we have a whole new vertical at Digilance we can explore that we weren't planning to explore.

So this is fabulous.

And I can't wait to dive deeper into the QSR and hospitality space because I see a lot of opportunity and we also know many great people in common in the industry.

It is a customer service, customer centric industry and I think that people will take notice of these technologies by the simple fact that they're starting to see new interfaces and new opportunities in these types of environments.

Well, I'm gonna let you drop the mic at that point because I can't top that.

Thank you for those, those kind words.

Once again, it is a, it is a relationship that goes both ways.

Obviously you have the expertise, the knowledge, the product, most importantly, and you have wonderful people that I've met, I've dealt with from onboarding perspective to just tech technical support and getting us up and running and in a quick manner.

So thank you to you and your team, especially you, because you've been driving it the entire time.

Super excited, can't wait to see where this is headed.

And I can't wait to show it to more and more of our industry colleagues and really show them what AR can do from an operations perspective to make their operations more efficient, more effective, more relevant and really the functionality behind some of this technology that they've never considered before.

I'll tell you what, the world of hospitality is changing and augmented reality is poised to be a major part of that transformation.

Whether it's training employees, improving logistics or enhancing guest experiences, the future is bright.

And with Digilens Argo, that future is already here.

Stay tuned for more insights.

And if you're heading to Mirtech, don't miss the chance to experience the Argo Smart glasses firsthand.

If you have any further questions for Brian or me and would like to connect with us, you can do so via social media.

Skip Kimple or MagicGateTech on X, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, you can go to the website@SkipKimple.com for all the archived episodes and show notes and also the Magic 8 website where you can hear all of these new episodes.

And of course you can email me@Skipagic8.com the countdown to Murtek is officially on.

Only 20 days to go.

If you're not planning to be there.

Seriously, why not?

This year is going to be huge.

Huge, I tell you.

It's the 30th anniversary of the show and you know they're pulling out all the stops.

We dropped a big press release this morning for this show, but heads up, another one is coming later this week and it's all about the conference.

And then next Tuesday.

Yep, another major announcement.

This one's a biggie.

Introducing a new partner to the hospitality marketplace.

Who is it?

I'm not telling you.

Gotta keep a little suspense on our end.

The Magic 8 team is in full on prep mode, packing, shipping and making sure everything is locked and loaded for the show.

So much to do and so little time.

Alright, back to the grind.

And until next Tuesday, stay safe, stay healthy and stay hungry.

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