![]() The world is changing, and there is a lot of opportunity to meet the needs of the new normal in the workplace. ![]() Bostonia: Has the pandemic restrained or bolstered your business?Įmily Lam: Little: COVID caused a pivot from our original plans, but we are designing our platform for what happens next. We have static (nonguided) sites associated with exhibits at Gallery 263 in Cambridge, but we think the guided tours are where it’s at. We will post links when they are launched by our customers-very soon. You can sign up and take a tour at the Paul Revere House and soon at other well-known sites in the Boston area. Boston-area sites also include the Paul Revere House the Tsongas Industrial History Center and Boott Cotton Mills Museum, both in Lowell Gallery 263 in Cambridge and BU’s College of Fine Arts. We have approximately 20 sites developed or in development. Bostonia: How many venues use your technology besides the Constitution?Įmily Lam: Thomas Little:We started in April 2020. Rtangent is looking forward, and we do think that we will go back into physical spaces, so we designed the platform to work both virtually and when we’re in the physical space. The platform is designed to be accessible and runs on phones, tablets, and computers using standard media formats. We do not target AR/VR headsets specifically, although Guided works with them if you have one. The space is re-created, but the experience throughout is live and brought to life by the guide. What differentiates us is the live experience part, where a content expert guide brings participants through the virtual space. We have tailored Guided for supporting virtual experiences for distressed industries, such as museums, travel, and trade exhibitions. This is realized in our Guided™ platform. At that moment, we decided to switch to these virtual tours rather than physical experiences. Then we had the pandemic, and no one was going into spaces. At the beginning, the plan was to go into augmented reality. Q &A With Emily Lam and Thomas Little Bostonia: What exactly is Rtangent? Does your technology require a VR headset?Įmily Lam: Rtangent was conceived to explore opportunities at the intersection of AR/VR and the internet of things. What we really wanted to do was allow your interpreter…to tell the story, and also to increase the amount of engagement by individuals.” “My daughter was applying to colleges during the pandemic,” Little says, “and she attended virtual college tours, which consisted of listening to an admissions person give a PowerPoint talk. (For younger kids, some venues offer historically informative online games.) With a click on their screens, tourists also can see text and photo panels with information about a venue and its treasures. It afforded a look at the ship’s magazine, a tiny room accessible by a crawl space that you cannot see during in-person tours, Lam says. The tour-in this case, with Little and Lam the live guides-offered panoramic, 360-degree photographic images, on deck and below, of the world’s oldest ship still afloat. We used a Zoom link on a desktop computer, but you can just as easily use a handheld device. They gave Bostonia a demo with one of the venues that will use Rtangent, the USS Constitution, berthed at the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston. The firm is the brainchild of cofounders Emily Lam (ENG’14,’16,’20), the company’s CEO, and Thomas Little, a College of Engineering professor of electrical and computer engineering. Rtangent’s technology allows people to tour museums and other venues on- or off-site, accompanied by live guides in real time. Rtangent is a tech start-up that-to borrow Star Trek’s futuristic lingo -is a mind meld of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). We ask them how they got the idea, what were their biggest stumbling blocks, and what’s next for their big idea. 50 Years.In our My Big Idea series, we bring you interviews with BU alums and other members of the University community who have launched a business, built a new product, or solved problems big and small. ![]() The Original Series - Lightspeed Fine Art Lightspeed Fine Art
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |