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The Digital Executive
David Fattal on Immersive Experiences: The Rise of Spatial AI | Ep 1240
00:19:33
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- [00:01]
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- [01:09]
Brian (Host)
Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Do you work in emerging tech? Working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.corazant.com forward slbrand welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is David Fatal. David Fitzall is the co founder and Chief Technology Officer of Leia Inc. The company behind Immersity, a technology platform delivering immersive experiences that make users feel part of the scene. Immersity is pioneering the path towards Spatial Intelligence, the next generation of AI where digital content blends naturally with the physical world. At Leia, David has led the convergence of advanced 3D display technology and spatial AI, driving the development of switchable 3D displays and real time 2D to 3D conversion software. His work has brought Immersive products to market with Samsung, Acer, ZTE and others, and Immersive is now used by millions of people worldwide. His current focus is building a planetary scale pipeline of real world 3D data and AI models to power the future of spatial computing. Prior to founding Leia, David spent nearly a decade at HP Labs working on quantum computing and nanophotonics. His breakthrough invention of light field backlighting was featured on the COVID of Nature and formed the basis for Leia's first generation displays. Well, good afternoon David. Welcome to the show.
- [02:36]
David Fatal (Guest)
Thank you for having me.
- [02:37]
Brian (Host)
You're very, very welcome my friend. I appreciate it. You're hailing out of the Silicon Valley area. I know that's Menilo park et al and I'm in Kansas City, so appreciate you making the time. Jumping two time zones over today. It's hard to sync calendars some days so David, if you don't mind, I'm going to jump into your first question. You began your career in physics working on quantum computing and nanophotonics. Before founding Leia. What key moments shaped your journey from research to building immersive technology products?
- [03:07]
David Fatal (Guest)
Yeah, it's a very interesting journey. So indeed I started in physics and quantum computing and really every problem where light was interacting with structures, very small structure they call nanostructures, and doing extraordinary things. Okay. So through my training I could see firsthand how when you design really, really tiny structures, you could, you could have magical effects with light. And that's always been a guiding principle in, you know, everything that I've done after this. Right. And the, the second part of the training was that we realized that I was at Stanford and then at HP Labs and we had the like to have access to nano fabrication equipment. So it's, it's extremely intim, you know, like room, room sized equipment that is designed to fabricate those nanostructures. And funnily the smaller you want the structures, the bigger the room. Okay. But I grew up and I was trained in that environment. So what could have been perceived for others as an impediment for me was actually fun. Right. So I actually was looking forward to use the big equipment to build these nanostructures and maybe the, what led really to the foundation of the company. The founding of the company was that around 2010, I think there were a lot of naysayers saying that it was going to be impossible to have what at the time they called a holographic experience. You know. But I think to today we use more the term immersive experience on everyday device. And it turns out that through my training I knew that that was going to be possible. So you know, I took that as a challenge, if anything, just to prove people wrong and which led to the founding of leia in around 2014.
- [04:46]
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- [05:17]
Brian (Host)
That's awesome. And I love the backstory. Yeah, I don't generally, I think you're probably the second or third person that is working in the Quantum space. And I just love it. I appreciate you sharing your journey. What was really cool, the message I took away is the challenges working with nanotechnology. And I know there's some naysayers out there, but you looked at these challenges as fun. And I think, well, I know that when you have fun with something like this, you can actually innovate and make things, make improvements, for example. So I appreciate that. David, your invention of light field backing became the foundation for Leia's displays. What was the breakthrough that made this technology viable for real world applications?
- [05:56]
David Fatal (Guest)
Yeah, so the origin story is kind of interesting. We were working at HP Labs on these very complex structures with these very big machines. And there was a fire drill incident at one point. And then you know how there's a fire drill, you're supposed to leave everything on the table and run, you know, out on the parking lot. But we'd been working on this structure for about three months and we didn't want to give it up. So we, we actually took it out of the lab on the parking lot and it started to interact with the, the sunlight. We're in, based in California, we're, we're lucky to have always sunshine and, and the sun was interacting with the structures. And this is where it hit us that this nanostructure would be actually helpful to not only do quantum computing or optical computing, but actually as a, as a base for, for a display. And if you fast forward a little bit, what we, what we was a way to do immersive, right? Immersive tech that removes all the previous compromises that had plagued the 3D immersive field. And by that I mean the biggest one is the need to wear some glasses or eyewear. Right. If you remember, in the 2010s, people were starting to look at 3D TVs, but everyone had to wear glasses. Was also the beginning of the VR era. And so the invention that we came up with was going to allow a beautiful and really comfortable immersive displays without having to wear headsets. And the second compromise that it removed was that you would still be able to use your everyday device, your phone, your tablet, your laptop, your monitor in their original fashion. Internally, we call it 2D mode because there's an immersive mode, we call it 2D mode. But for example, when you're going to check your email on your phone, you want it to have the full resolution of your regular display. You don't want to have some optics that is imposing some compromise in terms of visual quality. So the fundamental breakthrough was this technology that would allow us to switch on and off the display from a 2D mode to an immersive mode. And that's really what allowed this adoption into mainstream personal devices, consumer devices, is that we were not imposing any more compromise and we made 3D optional and not mandatory. And that's what really allowed it to take off.
- [08:19]
Brian (Host)
That's awesome. And to be able to have to turn it on and off, I think is amazing. I mean, we all remember you talked about the 3D glasses, but we've gotten beyond that now. But to have it on your personal device or a smartphone and be able to turn it off or flip that toggle is simply amazing. And I appreciate that. But I love the story at HP Labs Fire drills. We've all been there. We have to run out. And those are some of the times that you just incidentally figure something out or discover something. And I just love that story. So thank you. David. Immersity, your platform enables real time 2D to 3D conversion at scale. What challenges did you face in making this process both accurate and accessible for everyday users?
- [09:02]
David Fatal (Guest)
Yeah, so we didn't stop at the hardware, Right. I think in my previous answer, you heard me say that we have hardware that can switch from 2D to 3D, but that's only half of the story. Right. We also want to be able to convert content, right, from their usual format, which again is 2D. You see, pictures are flat, videos are flat, games are flat today. And we wanted to not only being able to project them physically into an immersive appearance, but also we wanted to convert the content itself. And it turns out that when you interact with 3D immersive hardware, you come across a lot of 3D data, and very often taken from the real world. So people take with data, dedicated devices to take 3D immersive pictures and videos just for the pleasure of looking at them on an immersive displays. Or you're going to work with game engine that are specially designed to render 3D immersive data and content for those displays. And so what happened during these years is that we actually gathered a very big data set of these 3D data gathered by people all throughout the world. And that has fueled essentially training of AI that is today extremely capable, extremely accurate into guessing or reconstructing, I would say, the depths in flat images. Right. And once we can associate depth to every pixel in an image, we can make that image immersive. Okay, so that was the first challenge in solving the data gap. Right? And the data gap was breached because we have access to this hardware that nobody else really has access to. The second challenge was to make it not only accurate, but fast enough that you could use it not only for pictures, but you could use it for live content, a video, YouTube stream, just a game, just about anything. And so those were years of research into essentially leveraging that data set, but also every trick in the book. We have to make AI behave faster, and that took a few years. And the third obstacle that we surmounted is it's good to have a basic technology or AI that does something, but it doesn't mean that it's going to be easy for people to use. So we have developed extremely simple ways for developers to integrate that technology into any app. Which means that today, whether your device is immersive capable or not, could be a regular phone, you can use this immersity technology to convert a picture, a video, and give it an immersive feel really extremely easily for developer and consumer alike.
- [11:54]
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- [12:21]
Brian (Host)
That's awesome. Having your platform allowing developers to tap into that technology and apply it in their current development environment, I think that's awesome. First of all, sharing something amazing with the rest of the world is just phenomenal. I talk about this all the time, but I just love how you worked hard and there were a lot of challenges along the way. You talked about solving that data gap. You had a lot of data that you collected and you were able to leverage AI to improve the product. Of course, AI needed to be improved in its speed, and we know how that works and that is currently moving at lightspeed at this point. But really appreciate the insights for our audience today. David, the last question as we look ahead to the future, how do you see spatial intelligence and immersive computing transforming how we interact with digital content? And what will the world look like when physical and digital realities fully converge?
- [13:17]
David Fatal (Guest)
Yeah, so it's going to start with you're going to see the spread of these immersive displays in what we call B2B verticals. So that might be design, medical, enterprise workflows, telepresence, or commonly 3D chat. Right. So it's going to start penetrating these verticals where immersive displays are bringing real value. So if you look at the medical field, you have things like, like patient communication or you know, in operation room you have, you know, surgeons now routinely operate robots, you know, to do the surgery for you. And they need to have very precise 3D data feedback without being encumbered by headsets, right? So you have this, you have this vertical and so for a couple of years this is where you're going to see them and then naturally will expand to consumer realm with use cases like gaming and most important of all, social media. Right. So I want you to imagine that in couple of years, you know, most of your phones or your tablets and so on are going to have, are going to be immersive ready or capable and you are going to take pictures and videos and post to TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, you know, with this immersive format and more and more it will feel like the norm, right? At first it will be something extraordinary and then it will become ordinary, right? And perhaps this would be. This is the funny part about technology when it works is that it eventually completely fades into normality. And you don't think about it. What is going to happen within five to 10 years is that immersive displays and technology is going to be like touch for a mobile device. You don't think twice. You don't marvel at your phone responding to your touch. But in 2005 this was something extraordinary and today you marvel at seeing immersive content on a phone or on a monitor. But in five to 10 years it will be absolutely normal. And what's going to happen is that then you are going to actually experience the digital world exactly the same way that you experience the real world in full depth. And you're going to be able to interact, you're going to be able to visualize, you're going to be able even to touch with haptic technology and you're going to be able to essentially more and more the digital digital world is going to become completely indistinguishable from the real world. For that to happen, we're going to have to develop a common language, a common coding structure for spatial and spatial computing and spatial AI. It's a little bit essentially an extension of what was done in the VR headset realm with so called OpenXR, which is again it's a standard for developer to develop immersive applications for headsets. And we're going to extend this to not only headset, but Also immersive displays. Right. So the final vision is, you know, I want you to think of an architecture studio. You know, in a couple years you will have, you know, everybody's going to be on an emergency workstation. You know, they'll visualize completely, you know, in depth and accurate and using hand gestures and so on in order to do their work, talking to their machine, to their AI, in order to change things and design and so on. And perhaps you have a supervisor that is walking down the aisle with a VR headset and that is seeing what the individual developers are seeing on their displays, but they will be completely immersed in a VR headset. So that interoperability, this kind of permanence of spatial data is where we're heading for. You can have essentially a parallel world that's going to mimic the real world and we're all going to be able to go back and forth between the real and digital with the use of those immersive terminals.
- [17:07]
Brian (Host)
That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that. And I love your perspective. Obviously, some of this stuff, you know, it's coming down the pike, it's just a matter of when. But I, I love what you talked about, where we can use this technology. Immersive displays, for example, in the B2B verticals, medicine and healthcare especially, that's my main background in my career is in healthcare, so I love to see that. And then of course, it's just going to be mainstream eventually on personal devices, gaming, social media, etc. And having that touch, sensory part of this is going to be phenomenal and we'll truly be living in the Jetson era, as we call it. So I appreciate the insights. David, it was certainly a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
- [17:49]
David Fatal (Guest)
Great, thank you, Brian.
- [17:51]
Brian (Host)
Bye for now.