The concept of Metaverse, with the “first stock of the metaverse” Roblox with a market value of over 40 billion US dollars, has become a hot topic in the venture capital circle in 2021. Talking about the metaverse, it is natural to return to VR/AR. This industry has been silent for a long time since it was touted by the capital around 2015. This year, VR/AR has quietly become a hot spot in the market again. Zhao Xiaoguang, director of Tianfeng Securities Research Institute, said that VR/AR entered the “eve” of the outbreak period this year, similar to the early stage of Apple’s outbreak in 2009 and 2016.
“The domestic AR circle is not large, and everyone may be familiar with each other, but the public may not know much about us, because we have been focusing on the research and development of AR optical display and corporate services in the past few years, and we have basically not done much publicity.” Cui Haitao, the founder of East Technology, said that their positioning is a service provider that provides AI+AR overall solutions for the digital transformation of enterprises based on the research and development of AR core optical display technology.
In the frontier technology field of array optical waveguide and holographic optical waveguide, Goolton Technology has applied for the largest number of patents in the industry in recent years and has grown the fastest. Benchmark projects in the industry have achieved outstanding results and gained a better reputation. Recently, they have attracted the attention of researchers of secondary market securities firms such as Haitong Securities, Ping An Securities, Minsheng Securities, Guosheng Securities and Industrial Securities.
1. The array optical waveguide technology with the highest light efficiency in the industry
The core technology of Goolton Technology can be summed up in a minimalist language as AI+AR. Among them, AI is responsible for visual recognition and calculation, which enhances the user’s brain, while AR is responsible for efficient display and interaction, extending the user’s eyes.
We know that high tech smart glasses need to see through, not only to see the real world but also to see virtual information. Compared with VR users entering the virtual world directly, AR needs to superimpose the two worlds of “real” and “virtual”. You can’t put the screen into the glasses, because the closest focusing distance of the human eye is about 10 cm, which requires adding one or a group of optical combiners to form a near-eye display. That means in the form of “stacking”, the virtual information and real scenes are integrated, which complement and enhance each other.
The optical display system of AR glasses equipment usually consists of microdisplay and optical elements. The difference in optical combiners is a key part of distinguishing AR display systems. It transmits light to the front of the eyes through the principle of “total reflection” and then releases it, projecting a large field of view image on an extremely thin lens, and the display hardware can be moved to the top or side of the head, which greatly reduces the obstruction of the optical system to the outside view.
A quality optical waveguide display requires high brightness, a wide field of view, and excellent color fidelity. Goolton Technology pioneered the seven-fold and dodecahedron optical mechanical patented technology with independent intellectual property rights and made the industry’s brightest OLED-based array optical waveguide products, and its lighting effect has an absolute leading edge in the market. Under the same conditions, the display brightness of Goolton Technology’s optical waveguide products can reach 4 to 5 times that of the industry peers.
2. Array optical waveguide module M2031
Take the array optical waveguide module M2031 newly launched by Goolton Technology in July as an example. The waveguide lens is independently designed by Goolton and has been mass-produced. Its brightness in the eyes can reach 500nit, and the light transmittance exceeds 80%. Compared with similar optical waveguide modules on the market, the M2031 optical module has a larger eye movement range, its exit pupil distance reaches 25mm. The module weight is less than 15g, and the side projection method is adopted, which has low optical distortion and a more compact design, giving full play to the advantages of Micro-OLED panels.
Cui Haitao said that because our products have the highest display brightness in the industry, they can be applied to a wider range of B-end scenarios. For example, for gun sighting, the outdoor environment is bright, and AR eyeglasses must have good near-eye display brightness to see the surrounding environment. Customers generally purchase our products.
Goolton Technology adopts nanomaterials and technology, special film system design and high light effect design of multi-folded optical path, and is in a leading position in the industry. Goolton Technology also created a volume holographic diffractive optical waveguide product. Its single-layer multiplexing technology makes a new breakthrough in the thickness of the diffractive waveguide, which is smaller than Microsoft’s three-layer diffractive optical waveguide and the two-layer diffractive optical waveguide of Magic Leap and WaveOptics and is more comfortable to wear.
At the visual recognition and interaction level, Goolton Technology’s AI recognition algorithm engine introduces an attention mechanism to achieve target detection and recognition and achieves millisecond-level recognition for glasses viewing angle, light changes, partial occlusion, industrial objects, etc. After public testing, it has improved 11.3% from the traditional algorithm and can recognize more than 10,000 types of industrial objects.
