SiliconExpert Podcast Episode 6 with Glenn ImObersteg of Holo Industries - Transcription

Host: Eric Singer

Producer/Director: George Karalias

[00:00:00] Glenn: When you walked into a conference center and you register for a show, they have all these signs that say, we're really COVID aware and keep your distance six feet apart. And then you walk in and they make you touch these screens, because you can register and get your pass.

[00:00:17] It's just crazy.

[00:00:18] Eric: You're listening to Glenn ImObersteg, CEO of Holo Industries, giving us a look at how the touch-free necessity of a pandemic is making Tony Stark's holographic HUDs a reality.

[00:00:30] Glenn: Nobody runs around after you and disinfects that screen. So if you take that keypad and put that below the counter and hook up a holographic terminal to it. Now you can do everything and register completely in midair.

[00:00:44] Eric: Welcome to the Intelligent Engine. A podcast that lives in the heart of the electronics industry brought to you by SiliconExpert.

[00:00:51] SiliconExpert is all about data-driven decisions. With a human driven experience. We mitigate risk and manage compliance from design, through sustainment, the knowledge experience, and thought leadership of the team partners and those we interact with every day expose unique aspects of the electronics industry and the product life cycles that live within it.

[00:01:12] These are the stories that fuel the Intelligent Engine.

[00:01:19] Today's spotlight is on Holo Industries, a company that has stepped straight out of our pop culture, sci-fi imagination from the iconic scene of princess Leia's hologram emitting from R2D2 pleading Help Me Obi Wan Kenobi to Tony Stark's holographic HUDs. Holographs had been a large part of art and entertainment.

[00:01:39] Now, partly out of necessity companies like Holo Industries are turning fantasy into reality. Holo Industries is the inventor of holographic touch, a disruptive technology that combines holographic plates, optics, sensors, and proprietary software and hardware components to create highly responsive, mid air interaction for customers and employees.

[00:02:02] So businesses can thrive during the pandemic. They manufacture products in various sizes and form factors for the consumer elevator restaurant banking, retail, hospitality, gaming, medical automotive, and aerospace industries. We have Glenn ImObersteg with us today, CEO of Holo Industries. He's also a father renowned public speaker, author of the book, The Bach Motif.

[00:02:26] And yes, he is a fan of science fiction, the Marvel movies and the Star Wars universe, Glenn. Thanks for joining us.

[00:02:34] Glenn: Nice to meet you, Eric. Now you can hear me. All right.

[00:02:36] Eric: Where are you? Are you on the west coast

[00:02:38] Glenn: Yeah, I'm in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Which was the site for "Animal House". It's the largest covered bridge capital in the United States west of the Mississippi.

[00:02:50] Eric: How did you wind up out there? Is that where you're from? Or did you go to college out there?

[00:02:53] Glenn: No, we had a ranch out here and we lived in Silicon Valley for years and decided we'd had enough of California about two years ago and moved up here full-time. We were the, were the pioneers at leaving California?

[00:03:07] Eric: It's certainly become a trend. So how is your entire operation up there in Oregon or?

[00:03:13] Glenn: Well, we have the lab and our engineering gets that takes place in Sacramento, but we have reps. We have reps all over the United States. So it doesn't really matter where we are. It matters where they are and we have reps all over the world actually.

[00:03:27] Eric: How did you get into this? Are you an engineer by education or training?

[00:03:32] Glenn: You know, I'm a marketing engineer. If you spend enough time in the engineering community, you pick up enough to be dangerous. I started out in the early eighties in the embedded business, I started working with Intel and Motorola and AMD.

[00:03:47] A lot of the semiconductor companies really needed to have ecosystems for engineers to develop their products. So we put together ecosystems. We went from there in 1989, when the wall came down. And, and Siemens needed to have all their Eastern European partners come to the U S to support Siemens chips and Infineon chips.

[00:04:07] We put together their ecosystem and then segue to being the key ecosystem provider for ARM. We put together all the ARM catalogs, all the ARM magazines. All of the ARM trade shows, et cetera for years, and then gradually evolved into working with the products directly. So getting into product development and product sales seemed like a natural thing to do.

[00:04:31] Here we are. A couple of years ago, I started working on this project and this has been really great. It was a wild ride. This started about a year before COVID hit. And then when COVID hit, it went crazy because everybody wants to do something in midair.

[00:04:45] Eric: Of course, that's incredible timing. I didn't realize that you had really just gotten it off the ground before then.

[00:04:51] Glenn: So we started at 18 months ago and I guess you could say that COVID had started, but nobody had really realized how awful it was going to be

[00:05:00] Eric: and how long it would last and who thought it would be

[00:05:04] Glenn: would hang on or how long people would, would keep it in the forefront. We'll see and there will always be some sort of plague hitting this a world.

[00:05:12] Eric: Yeah, I think that's one of the lessons we've been learning over the last year and a half or so is that we are looking for touchless solutions beyond just this pandemic.

[00:05:25] Glenn: It seems to be working quite well. We've got quite a few customers in a kiosk and in the registration business that want to keep it so that there's a lot of reasons.

[00:05:34] Irrespective of the fact it is contactless us and it is germ-free. Um, it's also an exciting new technology. It's like how long could the world wait before we got Tom Cruise and the Minority Report out in front? I think the holographic touch or being able to interact in mid air is a, I don't want to say sexy, but I could say sexy new media.

[00:05:54] And I think people are going to grab that We're getting people from all walks of life and people from all industries, parking meters, supermarkets ATM's and that sort of thing.

[00:06:06] Eric: So are you like I, and many of our listeners, a science fiction nerd?

[00:06:11] Glenn: Yeah, I am. As a matter of fact, you can't think about holographs without remembering Princess Leia and Help Me Obi Wan Kenobi. That was the first time that everybody in our generation, at least, or my generation got exposed to the beauty of holographs.

[00:06:27] Eric: Did you seek inspiration from these films? What was the original germ of an idea that got you going down this path?

[00:06:36] Glenn: What happened was we started working with a Swedish company Neonode, that does infrared sensors. They've put a light curtain out that you can interact with. And it's normally right off the surface of a touch screen, for instance. And then we started working with them because there was a real need for that sort of technology. And we were introduced about six months later fortuitously to a Japanese company, Aska3d that has this marvelous, 3d, holographic glass and plastic plate.

[00:07:09] If you combine the two technologies, you have holographic touch. And it seemed like such a no brainer. We picked up on it and started developing technology and it took off like wildfire.

[00:07:22] Eric: For our listeners who aren't familiar with the term light curtain. Can you describe a little bit about what that is and how that functions.

[00:07:30] Glenn: If you have a series of diodes, that generate an infrared beam, and you put them all together in a series and you can have basically you can have a curtain that goes, let's say you have a, let's say you have a one foot wide module. You could actually have a one foot long. And each one of these specific pixels generate a infrared beam anywhere you touch in that beam or in that series of beams, you'll get an X, Y coordinate. So you can put a keyboard there, you could put it against the wall and you could put a piano key or something. And every time you touch in a certain area it'll register that area. So if you take that and extrapolate that, and you put that in midair, in front of a holograph, Then you can interact with anything you can raise and lower.

[00:08:26] You can swipe, you can swirl, you can touch, you can pinch and enlarge. Anything you could do on a touch screen. You can now do in mid air.

[00:08:35] Eric: So with the light curtain technology, it sounds like before you all came along, that was being used essentially just in front of a normal display surface or something. And, and what you did was bring in the holographic technology, marry those two and allow that interactivity

[00:08:53] Glenn: Exactly, and we brought it out.

[00:08:55] We brought it away from the surface. So that now what you have is you have a complete midair interaction. So generally you were working about five or six inches away from any surface.

[00:09:08] Eric: And does the projection service just how this functions I'm so curious about is the projection surface the size of the holograph with which you interact or is there a difference in scale there?

[00:09:20] Glenn: The surface, the image that you generate in a holograph is based on the size of the holographic plate. So you can start at a three or four inches and you could do a doorbell holographic doorbell. You could work your way up to five or six inches and do a complete holographic keypad for entry into a residence.

[00:09:41] Then you get up to 200 millimeters, eight inches, and you can talk about doing a restaurant menu. And then we can talk about doing an ATM and we go all the way up to 310, 420, 630 and now we're looking at 840 and a thousand millimeters. So we're talking about a four by four foot screen. So you can imagine walking into a mall and having a four by four foot holographic mall map that you could touch.

[00:10:13] Jay's jewelers for instance. That could pop up and you could do exactly what you wanted you to swipe. You could enlarge it, you could see content, it all can be done in midair. So you never have to clean the screen because nobody touches it. And now this is only for still images. We do video as well. We're working with a major banking customer that wants to have these installed in banks.

[00:10:35] So when you walk up to the counter where you usually write your checks out a holograph, the pop up and say, hi, this is Eric. And would you like to be a MasterCard customer?

[00:10:47] Eric: It's hard to imagine a limit for this technology. You think how ubiquitous standard touch screens have become in the last decade or so?

[00:10:59] And it seems like this would be a superior replacement for nearly every case that you would have a regular touch screen or a more traditional keypad.

[00:11:12] Glenn: Exactly. What's great about this is that we've designed it two different ways. We've designed it so that we can actually capture a program. So if you have a specific program that you want to repeat on, on, and you want this to be a self-standing unit, we can program it so you can do a menu. For instance, that never changed. Or you can take the unit and plug it into your laptop or into a terminal using an HDMI and, or a USB. And whatever's on that terminal can become a holograph. When you're registering in a hotel, if you had a terminal where you actually could register, if you plugged into this unit, that terminal would become holographic.

[00:11:50] Well, I'll give you another example. When you walk into a conference center and you register for a show, they have all these signs that say, we're really COVID aware and keep your distance six feet apart. And then you walk in and they make you touch these screens, because you can register to get your pass just crazy.

[00:12:06] And then nobody runs around after you and clean and disinfects that screen. So that's the idiocy of the whole thing. If you take that touch screen and you put that in the keypad and put that below the counter and hookup, a holographic terminal. Now you can do everything. And registered completely in midair, germs, no touch, no foul, right.

[00:12:26] Not only that, you can actually sign in midair. So we've got a lot of people that want to be able to sign books and that sort of thing. And you can do that in midair

[00:12:35] Eric: For our listeners who have not yet been to your website. I'd recommend checking it out just to see this in action because it's just straight out of scifi.

[00:12:44] In fact, if you don't want to go to the website, just rewatch Minority Report, because that's basically what we're talking about here.

[00:12:51] Glenn: Yeah. That's exactly right. Or any Iron Man episode, any Iron Man episode would be just fine too. Yeah. And the website is, Holo Industries. We abbreviated the HoloInd, I N D .com.

[00:13:04] And so we have both, we have a lot of videos online and we have a couple of presentations

[00:13:10] Eric: So when you're developing something. Let's say the bank interface that you were describing. Are you working with a client to develop a wholly new bespoke solution? Or do you have product development teams that are just developing things to sell to those customers?

[00:13:27] Glenn: We're working with a major credit card... I can't tell you the name, obviously, cause we're under NDA, but it's a major credit card company and we're creating the hardware that can fit into ATM's and kiosks. And we're working with their software provider that does the back end. And that's important too, because there are a lot of security concerns with anything you do.

[00:13:48] And so we're working with the software companies. These companies are allied with. Once that's developed, then this would be anybody's game. A large ATM manufacturer could pick this up and run with it. The important thing is to get a sponsor that believes in you and we have a number of them. And then to create the package and then let the hardware manufacturers, the OEMs that do the kiosk, the ATM's and that sort of thing.

[00:14:14] The mall maps, parking garage meters, and all of those different manufacturers will pick up on it.

[00:14:20] Eric: I love that model of development, where you're already working with the client's set of needs, right from the get go, so you don't have to retrofit something that you've developed in isolation and then try to figure out how to get all their regulatory compliance things in order and all of that kind of thing.

[00:14:38] Glenn: You're right. It does simplify things. We've created over 75 prototypes and demos that are out in the field right now. And each one is bespoke or custom if you will, to the customer's needs, we expect to be able to get into manufacturing by Q2 of next year. It is really exciting. This was the perfect storm.

[00:14:59] I don't want it to be able to benefit from something like COVID, but at the same time, everybody's become very aware of. Oh, the fact that number one, they don't want to have to touch the supermarket checkout, or they don't want to have to touch an elevator key. We have them for elevators now as well, and actually walk in and touch the floor you want mid-air those sorts of things, they're going to be very important in the future

[00:15:24] Eric: That benefits everybody. And if it took a pandemic to make us aware of these things and to get us thinking about all the alternatives that have come up in the last couple of years to traditional, tactile interfaces, I, for one thought the QR code was dead two years ago.

[00:15:41] I didn't think that we'd see QR codes making a comeback. And yet they're ubiquitous now on practically every restaurant table, but they're a little clunky, right?

[00:15:51] Glenn: You know the thing about the QR codes. And I know that a lot of companies are getting into it and I, we all appreciate the fact that they're doing that and we can actually use our cell phones.

[00:16:00] I think the biggest problem is some of the security. In other words, there's nothing to stop somebody from throwing a fake menu down on a table with a QR code and having you scan it and open up your complete system to a complete stranger. So those sorts of security concerns were really a big deal, but. That you do have to have service.

[00:16:19] I don't know about you, but I'm always running low on battery. I have no idea why my cell phone runs out so quickly, but it does. And it's frustrating. However, I don't know if this is a remedy for everything, the holographic touch. I think that combinations of different types of preventative measures like QR codes are great.

[00:16:39] The antibacterial screens are great. Things like that. That would be that we're inventing. We're a country of inventors. And America's always been a country that rallies that technology to fit a problem. We really came a long way in the last year being able to come up with solutions. I think that holographic touch is one solution.

[00:17:02] Are there others out there that are, you know, equally good or for different situations? Uh, holographic touch is more expensive than an anti-microbial screen by far it's more expensive than printing out a QR code, but I think that there's a place for it and not only in a disease prevention, but in just in an, as an exciting new technology.

[00:17:22] And as of the time that we're recording this, not only are we in the midst of a pandemic, but we're also a knocking on the door of, of deep winter. And I think about all the complications that arise in the colder months of the year, when we're trying to interact with a touchscreen wearing gloves or with very cold fingers, I assume that the holographic touch would work equally well in gloved hands or with a stylus.or anything really, right?

[00:17:49] Yeah. It's great. You can use a chopstick or you can use your finger. It is really good with work gloves on, uh, if you're, if you like to fish and you're out and you're fishing, you always wear gloves. If you play golf, you're wearing a glove, this is the sort of thing it's just equally reactive.

[00:18:04] There's zero latency on it. It's equally reactive to anything. I think if you were wearing mittens, it would get a little tougher. If you're wearing a glove, a workglove it's perfect for industrial. It's perfect for military, cause they wear those thick gloves out in the field. I'll tell you what's really funny about it is that we've had it outside and it snows or it rains and the raindrops fall right through it.

[00:18:25] Eric: Oh, wow.

[00:18:27] Glenn: So it doesn't, there's no snow build up in the holograph because the snowflakes fall right through the holograph.

[00:18:34] Eric: Okay. That's everyone who's listening from here in Colorado their ears just perked up. Yeah.

[00:18:38] Glenn: There you go. That's perfect. Good. Let's try it. And Aspen, let's try it. And Aspen next year,

[00:18:43] Eric: I hereby volunteer to test that out.

[00:18:46] Glenn: And the other thing that's really cool about it is that we're working with a train manufacturer that wants to put the train maps that show you your progress along a route. And they want to be able to use the holograph, which is great because you don't have to worry about a surface. You can suspend a holograph from the ceiling of the car and, and they will display the route and the progress of the route.

[00:19:05] You can actually walk up and touch it, then, uh, figure out where, how long it's going to take you to get to the next city. But what's great about it is that it doesn't get in your way, which means you'll actually walk through the holograph. Sounds bizarre. Doesn't it,

[00:19:19] Eric: It does, again, it just conjures images of so many great Scifi movies and books.

[00:19:26] Glenn: And it's real. What I want to stress is there's no special glasses or smoke like Peppers Ghost or something like that from the early days of Holography. There are no special glasses, like I said, or lighting that you need to have this works anywhere. This works. So we've made it ultra bright because we need to have it work in an elevator.

[00:19:46] So it's ultra bright and it's almost 2000 nits. Most of your I-phones are what? 400 or something. So it's ultra bright. It's beautiful in the daylight and works great at night.

[00:19:55] Eric: What's the projection limitation as your plate grows bigger. Does that influence at all? How far from the plate you can project or is that always at that distance you mentioned earlier?

[00:20:06] Glenn: You can get Further, probably a foot, maybe two. I've seen it out there that far, we're working with television manufacturers now that want to be able to do holographic TV. And obviously you need to have it away from a surface. The infrared touch gets a little more difficult when you move that far out, because we're talking about infrared beam that can disappear into infinity and beyond!

[00:20:32] Eric: Wow. Holographic TV. And when you talk about the not needing to have glasses, that's gotta be what killed 3d television. We saw these things at the market a few years ago, the prices went down through the floor. They were super affordable. But nobody uses them because nobody wants to put on those glasses and this really gets away from that issue.

[00:20:56] Glenn: It does it, this is not full three dimensional holographic. This is like I said, this is a single dimension where it's out there in front of you. And there are other technologies that do this, that there's camera technology. They're a lot more cumbersome and a lot harder to integrate into things. Like, I dunno, like ATM's and that sort of thing for entertainment purposes, I think that the camera technology like Intel RealSense, those technologies are great for larger applications.

[00:21:26] But I think that when you get into things like the supermarket checkout or an entry system in a building. We're working on a doorbell now it's called Holo. Which is a holographic doorbell. And that really works really well for us. If we use just a small sensors and things like time of flight to, to recognize when people are approaching the building so that it can actually turn the holograph on.

[00:21:49] So you don't have a holo running full time.

[00:21:52] Eric: We've talked a lot about how incredibly relevant this has become due to the pandemic and just due to people's heightened awareness of germs and touching contaminated surfaces. But I'd love to hear a little bit about other applications where this is being used or could be used besides the health aspect of just making a touchless surface.

[00:22:17] Glenn: We're working with registration screens. I'll give you some examples. When you walk in, you want to find your doctor, it's a holograph, so you can touch the holograph and find your doctor without touching and screen. Hotels are really big and automated hotels. In Europe there's a lot of hotels that aren't even manned. That you can walk in and it gives you your key and everything else. And then you go to your room and there's nobody there. There's nobody in the main lobby. We're working in the Netherlands with a series of libraries. Because they want their customers to be able to come in and check out books, using a holographic touch, as opposed to touching the screen.

[00:22:51] Parking is really big. We've got four or five customers that want to do this with the parking terminals. Banking is huge for us and the elevators. We're working with four of the five biggest elevator companies now to do holographic elevators. We're really careful. We run the holographic buttons series next to the real analog touch buttons that you have.

[00:23:15] And one of the reasons is because we want to be ADA compliant of the blind need to have the braille. We're working with a system now that raises and lowers the holograph. So we'll have a camera that will figure out exactly how tall you are, where your eyes are, and it will raise and lower the holographs so that it's easy to visualize.

[00:23:34] Eric: Are there limitations in terms of the angle of viewing, do you have to be standing directly in front of it at a certain distance?

[00:23:42] Glenn: Yes. That's the biggest limitation is you have to stand in front of it. And you can't see it from the side. If you look at some of the videos on our website, you'll see, we turn the camera to the side and it looks like you're just touching midair.

[00:23:54] Before people get used to a hands-free cell phones, it looked like there was really stupid people driving down the street, talking to themselves. This is what it looks like. But it looks like this look like you're emphatically talking this up.

[00:24:09] Eric: When you talk about banking applications, particularly, it seems like that limited viewing angle, it could actually be a great benefit in terms of security so nobody can observe your pin if they're standing next to you, things like that.

[00:24:22] Glenn: Exactly. And this is one of the real benefits for this sort of thing. Forget the fact that it's COVID free. It's actually really secure because you can't see anything from the side. You always have to have your head resting on the guy's shoulders in order to figure out what they're doing.

[00:24:37] Eric: Yeah, and certainly harder for scammers to install a credit card skimmer that uses this technology. Good luck with that.

[00:24:43] Glenn: We'll find out how secure. We're working with a French software company and that major credit card company. And we'll have a completely operable system before Christmas. We're actually going to be showing this at CES.

[00:24:54] We have a large booth at CES. We're going to have, uh, all the different models on display and we're actually going to have gaming. So, that's one thing we didn't talk about earlier, and that is we're going to have a large two by two foot holographic game running and you can actually sit down or stand and interact with the game in midair.

[00:25:11] Eric: Wow. Tell me more about that. Are you developing the game in house or working with a game developer on this?

[00:25:17] Glenn: Yeah. We're working with some game providers, we want to get something that people can do very quickly. Yeah. Some of these war games you really got to get involved in. It's going to be a game that you can start and finish in a minute, but what's cool about it is you can do anything with this game.

[00:25:31] You can do it a touch screen. You can swipe, you can scroll. It's very good. As a matter of fact, I have a video of a Mandalorian helmet being spinned around on Holo Industries.

[00:25:42] Eric: I think about all the innovations that gaming has driven, particularly in terms of AR and VR headsets and kinetic systems. When you get gamers interested in a technology, things start to move very quickly.

[00:25:57] Glenn: Absolutely. Because then the innovation really kicks in. Cause that's where all the smart guys are. Yeah. I mean, let's just say that's what I was smart kids are. Those guys are really young and they've got it down and new gaming that's out there is insane. It's just so good.

[00:26:11] Eric: It really is. Do you now, or do you have any plans to, to release a developer's kit so that people can start playing around with this on their own?

[00:26:19] Glenn: Yes. All you really have to do is get the hardware because the hardware is, think of it as a mouse, but the hardware hooks up to your laptop. So if you have a game that you're developing on your laptop that's a touch game and you plug an HDMI and a USB into your laptop. You've got the same game and the same capabilities.

[00:26:37] Yeah and that's how easy it is. If you have a platform on your laptop or on your touch screen, that works, and then you plug this holographic in, it'll go through the plate, into the sensor and out into the mid air, and you're going to have a holographic touch.

[00:26:53] Eric: And is that something that's available now for consumers?

[00:26:56] Glenn: Right now.

[00:26:57] Eric: Wow.

[00:26:58] Glenn: We're just we're backed up. Uh, if you, if your listeners want one, we're about 90 days now, we're like getting a refrigerator. It takes a while.

[00:27:07] Eric: But 90 days, these days is not so bad. Have the supply chain disruptions that have occurred over the last year and a half or so affected your production capability.

[00:27:19] Glenn: To a certain extent. So the good news is that displays and that sort of thing from China are inexpensive. The bad news is we let all of our display business go to China. I'm sure that there's an awful lot of displays sitting off the coast of Los Angeles, but hopefully that situation will improve. The business has to continue.

[00:27:36] Commerce has to continue. They'll find a way.

[00:27:40] Eric: Are you thinking of any educational applications?

[00:27:45] Glenn: I think there's plenty of those. I really do. We're working with museums. There's nothing cooler than a holographic Tyrannosaurus Rex.

[00:27:53] Eric: Exactly. I am imagining my five-year-old really losing his mind over a holographic T-Rex.

[00:28:01] Glenn: It's funny because I think your five-year-old will lose his mind for about two hours. And then it'll go from state-of-the-art to commonplace very quick.

[00:28:08] Absolutely. None of your kids remember when we didn't have cell phones.

[00:28:12] We'll all be taking this for granted soon enough.

[00:28:15] Exactly. It'll be a commodity before long it and that's okay too.

[00:28:18] I think if there were going to have a lot of imitations coming out, we're gonna have a lot of competition coming up in the next couple of years. We welcome that. That means that we've gone from a pioneering effort to becoming mainstream. We're running a panel discussion at the self-service innovation show in Florida in the middle of December.

[00:28:41] It might be a good time for some of your listeners to tune into that because we're going to have a panel of banks, a credit card restaurant and hotel people in the panel talking about this new and innovative technology. We field inquiries, maybe half a dozen inquiries a day.

[00:28:59] Eric: I can see why

[00:29:00] Glenn: They're from all industries, parking, supermarkets, restaurants, cafes, elevators, residences, you know, I got a call from a train manufacturer and I said, oh, well, what do you want to do?

[00:29:13] Want to do a map? You want to do a route? Do you want to do, what would you like to do a restaurant menu for your dining car? What would you like? They said my biggest problem is the lavoratories. I said, okay. They said, we would really like to do, is to have you do a holographic flush. So I said, hell, sure we can do that.

[00:29:35] It's really pretty cool. I mean, if you think about it that's the worst thing you could do. We're actually creating this holographic image of a commode that swirls around when you touch it. When you imagine if a nurse comes in, first thing she has to do is put gloves off and she walks in, she walks in and she adjusts your bed.

[00:29:55] She walks out and she throws the gloves away. She does that 400 times a day easily. So what we're looking at is holographic entry systems, where you can just walk up and put your hand on the holograph and the door will open. And then the same thing with the bed. If you have a Holo on the bed, you can wave your hand over the bedrail and it'll raise and lower the bed.

[00:30:14] Eric: When you describe how simple it is to transmit a new interface to the same device, especially imagining in a bedside application, in a hospital where you may have one screen that just adjust the bed. You may have another screen that allows the nurse to, to look at the patient's vitals and another screen that lets the patient interact with things.

[00:30:39] And it's just still one piece of hardware that flexibility's so powerful.

[00:30:45] Glenn: Exactly. You can change screens just by waving your hand. And that's, what's important about things like menus. You think about a menu. A menu that's going to have 30 items, 40 items on it. You couldn't put 40 items on one screen, but what you could do is you could scroll through.

[00:31:01] Through the menu, you can change the screens dynamically just by changing the touch screen that it's attached to. And that touch screen is connected to the back of house where they actually do inventory and the kitchen.

[00:31:13] Eric: Are you involved in the, in the manufacturing or just even selling from third parties?

[00:31:19] The larger device, let's say a kiosk or a, or, or another physical form factor beyond the plate itself.

[00:31:27] Glenn: What we're producing is a module that will actually slip into any form factor from a hundred millimeters. And we can actually go smaller 50 millimeters up to a thousand. Somebody can actually buy this rack and just slip it into a kiosk or slip it into a car dashboard or slip it into a television, uh, you know, chassis.

[00:31:47] Eric: Thanks so much, Glenn really appreciate it.

[00:31:49] Glenn: Oh, absolutely. It's been a real pleasure.

[00:31:53] Eric: I'd like to thank our audience for tuning in and thank Holo Industries for sponsoring this episode of the SiliconExpert Intelligent Engine. Tune into new episodes that will delve into more of the electronics industry.

[00:32:05] Upcoming topics will include an examination of the ever expanding reach of edge AI and a peak at water coolers that fill their tank from the air around them. Be sure to share our podcast with your colleagues and friends, you can also sign up to be on our email list to receive updates and the opportunity to provide your input on future topics.

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