Today, 6D.ai made a multi-faceted announcement including a partnership with Qualcomm to power spatial understanding on for Snapdragon-powered devices. This article excerpts 6D.ai CEO Matt Miesniek’s Medium post, with permission.

Laying the foundation to build a 3D map of the world 

by Matt Miesnieks, 6D.ai, 8/27/19

We’re all extremely excited to announce our cooperation with Qualcomm Technologies and Nreal, the launch of Android support (with HMDs and bit-compatible IOS interoperability), and roll out our pricing & business model. These are the first (of many!) steps we are taking toward building this 3D map of the world.

Today represents a milestone in our journey as a company, with a big traction announcement in conjunction with Qualcomm, Nreal and Deutsche Telekom, a big product announcement regarding cross-platform support for Android and iOS (and HMDs), and announcing our business model & pricing to enable our customers to ship their apps with confidence around their costs.

6D was founded to deliver the next platform of computing — the 3D maps of the world, usable by machines and people…. the mirrorworld. This 3D model of the world is what all apps will run on, being readable via APIs for developers to help solve key UX problems for their next-gen apps. We are seeing this happen today with businesses of all sizes across a variety of industries looking to build spatially aware applications that go beyond AR to scanning, location-based services and in the future, drones and robotics. This technology shift brings solutions for advanced AR Cloud apps, visual localization in spaces inaccessible by GPS, and consumer 3D scanning at scale. 6D’s technical breakthroughs do in software on a phone, what previously required dedicated hardware (and people). This means that the mirrorworld, the next platform, is closer than we imagine.

We’re often surprised that 6D has such a high profile in the AR industry, for such a small & young company (15 people, seed funded). Many of the experts in AR understand how a map of the world gets built from on-device computer vision tech on phones. But the rest of us also need to see simple use-cases, and how they will scale out. Today’s announcement addresses that question head on, with Deutsch Telekom, Nreal & Qualcomm coming together to solve one of the most compelling AR use-cases around remote support for field service engineers, but for the first time using low cost hardware.

Enterprises have been the earliest adopters of AR, seeing clear ROI in simplifying work processes. Remote field support has been one of the first use-cases to be deployed. However to deliver these use-cases has meant using expensive all-in-1 headsets. We are working to change that for the first time by teaming up with Qualcomm and Nreal to enable a fully spatially mapped field-service application for DT, while only needing a phone and low cost lightweight glasses. This UX is possible because of 6D’s software based approach, and 6D will be a default part of Qualcomm’s solution, offered to all HMD OEMs when they choose Qualcomm’s leading XR chips.

This is the first step that 6D is taking to deliver on a key use-case, and doing it at scale. Continue reading…

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Disclosure: AR Insider has no financial stake in the companies mentioned in this post, nor received payment for its production. Disclosure and ethics policy can be seen here.