Visualix AR Cloud Platform Looks to Give Enterprises the Ability to Virtually Map Their Facilities

A new augmented reality cloud platform from German startup Visualix is working to give enterprises the capability to scan their own warehouses, factories, and stores and create maps for augmented reality navigation.

During next week's Augmented World Expo (AWE) Europe, the computer vision company will introduce the Visualix Mapping and Positioning System for creating AR navigation apps.

Visualix AR Cloud Platform Looks to Give Enterprises the Ability to Virtually Map Their Facilities — *Image via Visualix*

The platform includes a scanning app and content management system along with the company's Localization SDK, APIs, and AR cloud service necessary for mapping large scale environments, tracking physical objects in the space, anchoring persistent AR content, and developing apps. The system works with ARKit and ARCore, using its own technology to amplify mapping and localization range. Visualix's AR cloud provides the computational power for the technology as well as the means for storing the 3D maps scanned through the app.

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"Our goal is to give enterprises a tool to easily map their physical environment with available mobile phones and tablets within minutes. Our clients can use the visual maps to precisely localize and track their assets and equipment without any specialized knowledge," said Darius Pajouh, Visualix CEO and co-founder, in a statement provided to Next Reality. "Our customers don't need any beacons or markers to localize the position or navigate through a large scale environment. We can precisely define where the user is and offer a scalable solution that is focused on enterprise needs."

Companies like Niantic, 6D.ai, and Ubiquity6 are already working to offer AR cloud capabilities for consumer apps, gradually creating a dynamic in which the entire world is blanketed in a digital layer for gaming and commerce. But a market also exists for enterprises to build their own private AR clouds, a notion espoused by Wikitude in what it calls "private micro AR clouds."

"The idea of the AR cloud obviously requires that your device will seamlessly track all of your environment," said Philipp Nagele, Wikitude's chief technical officer. "But here is the issue: I am pretty sure that there are things happening in your living room or any other private space, that you do not want to share with the rest of the world. Let alone, upload it to a public AR cloud provider, so that everyone can search it."

In this respect, Visualix hits the mark for enterprises, allowing those companies to map their own spaces for their own, sometimes private purposes. This can include mapping a warehouse so that employees can find inventory more efficiently, or guiding customers around a store and highlighting items that are on sale.

The company currently counts Nokia as an early adopter of the service, which has been deployed at multiple locations, with plans to add more. Also, optical company Zeiss has requested a pilot test of the service based on Visualix winning the Zeiss and KIT Robotics Innovation Competition.

The service will officially launch in November, and companies interested in using the service for their facilities can request a demo on the Visualix website.