AR glasses from Switzerland

The Bernese start-up Almer has developed intelligent data glasses. There are plenty of enquiries from industrial companies.

Augmented reality glasses are already indispensable in the industrial sector: expensive flights of experts to production sites are to be avoided with the intelligent glasses, and repairs are to be possible much faster. "With such glasses, the expert sees exactly what the worker sees with the camera," explains Sebastian Beetschen, CEO of the Swiss start-up Almerwhich wants to bring Europe's first AR glasses to the market.

Lighter than the competition

Almer has managed to do what many of the tech giants are currently working on: develop their own functional AR glasses. "We are the only European start-up that can do this," says founder Sebastian Beetschen, who previously worked as an engineer on Microsoft's HoloLens AR glasses. However, with a weight of just under half a kilogram, these glasses are considered comparatively cumbersome.

The Almer project was launched with the question: "What does it take to make meaningful AR?" and researched by students and researchers from ETH and Tsinghua University. Then in 2021 Almer Technologies founded by ETH students and researchers. Innosuisse immediately supported the project.

Pilot project with Huber+Suhner

The Swiss startup also launched a pilot project with Huber+Suhner as soon as. The goal of Huber+Suhner was to make the glasses to reduce overseas flights by application technicians by 50 %.

Holger Haussmann, Head of Process Engineering LF at Huber+Suhner, says: "With the augmented reality glasses from Almer, we kill two birds with one stone: On the one hand, we are quasi very fast and close to the customer and can work together on technical solutions. On the other hand, we reduce the environmental impact and lower the costs. In this way, digitalisation brings real added value to our customers, partners and us."

Already in August 2021, the team successfully proved the feasibility of the envisaged AR glasses. As of December last year, prototypes were created, with which the first customers were able to test the entire system. Based on the knowledge gained from this, Almer plans to start pilot production in Q2 2022.

Source: fuw / / startuptickerAlmer