Ari Grobman (Lumus) on When We Will Get AR Glasses We’ll Want to Buy

Ari Grobman is the CEO of Lumus, a company developing a novel optics solution for AR glasses. 

Before going any further, let me provide a little perspective up front: When I consider the biggest hurdles to delivering consumer-grade AR, optics and displays are at the top of the list. The display and the combiner optics are two separate, but intimately connected, engineering challenges. Lumus sells an “optical engine” that includes a microdisplay from a third party, but their real magic is in the combiner optics, the part that directs the light from the display system into our eyes and combines it with light from the real world.

Lumus has taken a different technical approach than most waveguide combiner optic companies. Rather than use the principles of diffraction to bend the light into and out of the lens, Lumus uses the principles of reflection—effectively partial mirrors—to get the light into and then out of the lens. Proponents of the diffractive approach cite that the manufacturing process is relatively easier and cheaper, and the performance of the lens is good enough with a very thin formfactor. Lumus argues its solution provides better performance with a manufacturing process that is good enough to be reasonably priced for consumer-grade glasses as the market scales.

Back to Ari…. Ari spent most of the early part of his career in sales, including 10 years as the VP of Sales and Business Development at Lumus before being promoted to CEO about 6 years ago. Ari has led his team through multiple successful customer engagements, advancements in R&D, and continued success in military and enterprise sales. In fact, Lumus technology is used by spinal surgeons across the US as well as fighter pilots flying A10 and F16 aircraft.

In this conversation, Ari discusses what he’s seeing generally across their various customer engagements, including some of the product strategy, potential early use cases, and the timing of new market entries. As a way to help frame some of the discussion, Ari describes some of the similarities and differences between components for smartphones and smartglasses. 

Ari goes on to discuss recent advancements the company has made in both the waveguide technology—namely delivering a bigger virtual image from a smaller display by expanding the image in two dimensions within the lens—as well as progress in improving the manufacturability of the lenses. Ari also describes how Lumus sets themselves apart from the competition in enabling both enterprise and consumer-grade smartglasses.

You can find all of the show notes at thearshow.com. Please consider contributing to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/theARshow.