I've been watching these HP Sprouts since at least as the last CES. I thought it was really clever that HP had a demo truck right at CES registration last year but that wasn't enough for me to blog about them. It was the first thing you saw as you walked in to pick up your badge.
Still, I figured these were going to be more for children. The apps were pretty simple. At the time I think they were selling for around 2 grand. It was a little pricey for a kids desktop but I figured the price would come down and it looks they they have. They are now selling for about 1600 bucks.
Anyway - when I walked into my last conference and saw Light Guide Systems using one I was pretty intrigued. You don't know how much I love seeing a company use a product for an application I didn't expect. It fills me with such joy. I can't even tell you.
The company basically projects instructions on how to assemble items for manufacturing. Since the Spout has cameras in them they can detect if you are assembling products correctly which is something I can see companies actually benefiting from.
While I was looking for demos on youtube to show you how their software worked I realized this company was at Augmented World Expo earlier in the year and to be honest I didn't even notice them. Previously they had been doing this via projectors. I'm pretty sure that is the reason I passed them by. Projectors never seem to gain any traction. I'm not sure what the reason is. That would have flipped my meh button.
In stepped HP I guess with the Sprout. Light Guide Systems decided to partner with them and I can see why. The hardware seems custom made for their needs. I've been keeping a wait and see attitude about these little machines, but they have now moved into the "maybe" category. And really... HP needs all the good press it can get. Right?
No comments:
Post a Comment