New data from the open source reveals the story of a simple javascript function. One line of code was re-invented over 100 times and duplicated over 1,000 times across GitHub’s top 10,000 repositories. This is only a symptom of a much deeper problem.

Imagine every time you wanted to drive a car, you had to build new wheels. People would probably still be riding horses to work. Elegant, some might say, but a terrible waste of time and effort. New data shows this is exactly what is happening in 2017. If you are a developer, you might be reinventing the smallest of functionalities across repositories and microservices every day.

Code components are the fundamental building blocks of any application. they are the atomic building blocks of our technological future. Different functionalities can and should be reused across different applications, repositories, and projects. In practice, this rarely happens. Instead, people often re-invent or duplicate the same code over and over again.The overhead of creating and maintaining hundreds of tiny repositories and micro-packages simply isn’t practical.

To see how deep and how far the phenomenon goes, we took a deep look into the guts of the open source on GitHub.

The story of “isString”

A semantic code identification technology was used to take a deep look into the guts of the open source on GitHub. The top 10,000 Javascript repositories were analyzed. Our scanners were looking to see how many times people reinvented one simple functionality: checking if a variable is a string. Normally, this can be done with 1-4 lines of code. Here are the results:

This simple functionality had been written in more than 100 different ways across only 10K repositories. The top 10 implementations were duplicated over 1,000 times. Given that GitHub hosts 55 Million repositories, the same function was duplicated millions of times. Here are a few examples from top open source projects:

Although it is true that change is necessary for evolution, these numbers mean bad new for everyone, for two main reasons:

First, constantly reinventing small pieces of code takes time and effort. Not only is it wasteful, but it actually holds back innovation. Reinvention Competes for the same time and resources which could better have been invested in building new things.

Second, code duplications are bad. Trying to fix a bug duplicated across dozens of places is hard and takes large amounts of time, and is also likely to break stuff. The larger the code base and the more repositories you have, the worse it becomes.

Why is it happening

The obvious solution would be to make code components reusable across repositories. Much had been said about code reusability. Renown community members post about designing reusable pieces of code. Others debate and struggle to force small components into their own repositories and packages. Most agree, there are three major problems that prevent us from building an arsenal of hundreds of small reusable components:

1. Creation Overhead: Creating a new repository and a package for every small component will take a lifetime. There is simply too much configuration overhead required to make this process practical at scale.


2. Maintenance: maintaining dozens or hundreds of tiny repositories and packages is no joke and neither is modifying small packages going through multiple demanding steps every time (cloning, Linking, debugging etc.). This may very well end up taking more time and effort than it could save.


3. Discoverability: packages are hard to find. No one can say for sure what’s really out there, or what to trust and use (we all remember the left-pad story). Organizing hundreds of micro-packages and quickly finding the right one to use is no easy task.

Bottom line is: very few people create and maintains such an arsenal of micro-packages.

Write code once, use it anywhere

So, how can we change things? A good place to start would be dealing with the three problems: making reusable components quick to create, simple to maintain and easy to find.

To do exactly that, a new open source project called Bit has been recently released to GitHub. But is a virtualized code component repository. It enables developers to build a set of reusable components and use them anywhere they are needed.

In a way that might sound somewhat similar (although different) to what Docker did for VMs, Bit adds a virtualized level of abstraction. It allows developers to create reusable components with almost no overhead at all and use them as a dynamic API. This means using nothing but the code actually used in your application.

Bit solves all of the three problems mentioned above using a virtual repository called a “Scope.“ A Scope allows you to create and model components without the overhead we know today. DDeveloperscan then find and use them with a unique NLP based semantic search engine. Scopes are distributed, which adds similar advantages known from a distributed Git repository. They can be created anywhere, and even connected to create a distributed network. A contained and reusable environment helps each component run and build anywhere. Scopes also help when collaborating as a team.

And in conclusion…

Code duplications (or reinvention) are a serious problem, and the data drawn from GitHub shows how widespread it really is. This is happening mainly because there isn’t a practical alternative that makes it possible to create a growing set of reusable components.  Open source projects such as Bit or others can help solve this problem, saving valuable time and effort.

Bit is language agnostic by design, and uses special drivers to work with different languages. In the not so distant future, we could all work with virtual code bases composing pieces of code together to build anything (as described in the Unix philosophy). Meanwhile, using Bit or finding new ways to reuse atomic components would be a good place to start.

When you think of robots designed to help people, you might think of the role of robotics in caring and customer service roles or companion orientated service robots like Pepper, Nao or even Hasbro’s companion pets. Then more recently there’s the emergence of robots as sexual or romantic partners. One start-up from Israel, Intuition Robotics is throwing an interesting offering into the ring, a new AI companion called ElliQ, aimed at keeping older adults active and engaged, and reducing the epidemic of loneliness among older people. I spoke with Dor Skuler, CEO and co-founder to find out more.

Skuler explained the rationale behind the robot:

“We live longer but also healthier lives. 90 percent of older adults want to live in their own home and the period of time we’re still cognitive, still independent and we don’t have to live in assisted care is growing. Conversely, younger people live further, and further away from their parents with hectic lifestyles that rely heavily on technology. About 30 to 60 percent of older adults identify themselves say that they are lonely which usually means that the real number is even higher.”

In terms of function, ElliQ is perhaps closer to Alexa than Pepper as Intuition Robotics is leveraging Cognitive Computing, Human Robotics Interaction, and Cloud Robotics in developing the robot’s ability to proactively recommend digital and physical activities to keep owners active and engaged with family, friends, and life.

The robot creates a conduit for older adults to connect with their family. As Skulker notes:

“What we can do with robots is really simplify the means for older adults to connect with their family. If you look at a typical family, we’re all on Facebook Messenger. We share some of the information and pictures and content but aging parents are not part of that discussion. Teenagers don’t want to call grandparents. But what they love to do is share a selfie, to find the link to a TED talk. They maybe send an emoji or text message and communicate the way they’re used to communicate but just on messenger. So the first thing that we created is in essence, a virtual chat bot for a messenger that allows the family to very easily connect with Grandma.

But it’s extremely intuitive. They don’t have to work the text, they don’t have to unlock their phone. They don’t need to try and look at small letters, they don’t need to click anything with their fingers. We just tell them ‘hey here’s a new picture from your granddaughter do you want to see?’  If she says yes we can show it to her and if she wants to comment then we record a message and it’s sent. So all of a sudden she’s part of the conversation. She gets the opportunity to get the content instead of having that once a week awkward discussion, she’s just part of the family.”

See also: Are robots replacing humans in health care?

It’s a bit like putting older relatives back in the family home where they are content to sit and observe and engage with the family members as they go about their day. ElliQ also takes this a step further with a proactiveness that differentiates the robot from Alexa and Siri that wait for the user to prompt them:

“Older adults by and large become reactive and not proactive. they tend to stick to a routine. They tend not to discover and add new things and new capabilities to their day. If you suggest things to them that are relevant to them there’s a very high probability that they’ll say yes. (Which by the way means you have to be extremely responsible and only suggest appropriate things and never take advantage). So basically ElliQ has extremely smart sensors and the ability to understand what’s going on at home and suggest activities. For example, ‘ Hey, it’s a beautiful day why don’t you go for a walk?’. It might be a schedule reminder to take your meds, a reminder to keep an appointment and it might be in the digital world: ‘Hey you want to listen to some Frank Sinatra? Or here’s a great TED talk you might want to listen to?’”

A unique aesthetic

ElliQ’s innovative design was created in collaboration with Yves Béhar, founder and principal designer of the award-winning industrial design firm fuseproject. It is comprised of two separate elements: ElliQ, the social director, exhibits human characteristics through gestures animated by movement, speech, sounds and light. A LED lighting display, along with a wide range of motions are utilized to convey subtle emotional expressions and give the device a friendly and warm personification. The second element consists of a separate screen that functions in a cradle display or in the user’s hand to view content in the location of their choice.

It’s not every day that you speak to a CEO of a start-up whose first hire was a gerontologist.  Other involved with the project include former VP of Advanced Technologies at Apple, Prof. Don Norman, along with Intel SVP Amir Faintuch, and leading academic experts in the fields of Cognitive Computing, HRI, Machine Intelligence, and Robotics.

Skuler explained that some of their initial assumptions of a robot for the aged were incorrect:

“We thought that we each create an environment in which the older adult needs to take care of ElliQ and we found out that that’s not really the case. The best thing you can do is help people feel like they’re not completely alone at home.  We were worried that older adults wouldn’t want to talk to a machine. Especially when I sat in a room full of older adults and showed them how I use Siri. and I got very strange looks. But we found they are absolutely willing to talk to a machine and over time they treat them more and more as entities rather than devices.” 

ElliQ is currently being showcased at the Design Museum in London and in February Intuition Robotics will be rolling out a trial phase in the homes of older adults in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We live in a cyber-vulnerable world – a world governed by data. Data encapsulates almost every aspect of our personal and public life. It is heavily shared, distributed, stored and accessed, and it is constantly at risk. Recent mega-hacks, such as the ones on Target, Yahoo, and Ashley Madison, among others, demonstrate that leaking of personal information and misuse of our data are inevitable in a world that is becoming increasingly more connected and data-centric.

As concerning as these hacks are, we should be aware that at the end of the day, the risk is merely the misuse of data. Without question, attacks such as these can have devastating effects on people’s lives, but their outcome is limited to the virtual world and cannot touch the physical world, at least not directly.

See also: The U.S. VA protects your hacking cough from hacking

This is all changing now as our world is gradually developing into a cyber-physical one. Wikipedia defines a cyber-physical system as one where physical and software components are deeply intertwined. That is, physical systems control, and are controlled, by electronic components.

A good example of a cyber-physical system is a modern car, with approximately 60% of its costs associated with electronic engineering. There are often more than 100 electronic units in a modern vehicle that affect critical mechanical and physical components, such as brakes, the steering system and the door lock mechanism.

Another example is a manufacturing plant that is not only monitored by software, but to a large degree, is also controlled by it, often via remote wireless interfaces.

These are only two examples, but many others exist in countless industry verticals, such as intelligent transportation systems, medical devices and home automation — aka the smart home.

Not the same as IoT

A cyber-physical system is closely coupled with, but is not synonymous with, the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT devices are typically the controllers of the cyber-physical domain. They use one or multiple connective technologies (e.g. cellular or Bluetooth) and are governed by service providers or user applications on a mobile device. For instance, the iPhone application provided by your vehicle manufacturer enables you to unlock your car or start the engine remotely. The Amazon Echo smart speaker app that controls your home lighting is another good example.

What is common to these examples is that they allow us, as end users, to wirelessly manipulate physical functions.

Our control over these systems is terminated at the IoT controller (the vehicle telematics system or the smart speaker, respectively). The IoT controllers communicate with physical objects using two key elements – sensors and actuators. Sensors measure properties of the physical world (e.g. the temperature of a centrifuge) and report them to the controller. Actuators manipulate the physical world (e.g. keep the car in its lane) at the command of the controller.

The glue that connects all of this is software in the form of code and data, and it is software, not love, that makes our 21st Century world go ’round. Therein lies the problem – software code inevitably has bugs and design smells, which can potentially lead to serious security issues – what we would call exploitable.

The number of actual exploitable bugs per 1,000 lines of code depends on numerous factors, including what research you care to read. But even by the most optimistic research, the average vehicle, with some 100,000,000 lines of code, is likely to have a few thousand exploitable bugs – that’s what we call a hacker’s paradise.

Before we panic, get rid of our cars and revert to horse-drawn carriages, it is worth noting that cars are safe and that this number does not necessarily represent a few thousand ways in which your car could be manipulated to kill you as you are driving. To truly assess how vulnerable a system is to attack it needs to be thoroughly analyzed. There are many factors to take into account, such as attacker motivation and access to the target. Still, the overall concern is valid, and no less of a valid question is “how did we get here?”

My answer might catch you by surprise. I think that it was almost inevitable that we arrive at this point. History has shown, time and again, that markets are driven by features, with security lagging behind. When the first computers were connected to the Internet, only a handful of experts thought of the issues of its inherent insecure architecture. Of course, they were largely ignored because they didn’t contribute to the bottom line.

The result was that we gradually became acquainted with a world of mystical cyber-creatures, such as viruses, worms and malware. It took time for the industry to react, because it’s always harder to add security to a production environment. Gradually, antivirus programs and firewalls were invented and we managed to move on. PCs are not without their security issues, but the economy didn’t collapse and the sky didn’t fall.

The next wave of connectivity

A similar path could be traced as we moved on to the next wave of connectivity – smart mobile devices and the evolution of IT systems. The security guys are always blowing their whistles at the gate, shouting that we must build in security at the initial design stages, but market drivers are pushing for features, more of them and faster.

Is the same happening in the IoT world? Recent data suggests that this is indeed the case. So, you might be comforted by the premise that we let the dynamic of technology run its course, adding in security as an afterthought, the same way we did in the past. However, there is one very important observation, one which I would like to be the takeaway of this article – the tolerance for error falls dramatically every time we become more dependent on software.

We have managed to overcome loss of data on our personal computers and hacked phones. We struggle with colossal data breaches to credit cards databases and our most personal information. Will we be able to cope with a real mega-hack that compromises, or worse yet, irrevocably harms, our physical world?

A better idea might be to invest in security by design. Those experts might be right this time around.

VB Profiles Connected Cars Landscape

This article is part of our connected cars series. You can download a high-resolution version of the landscape featuring 250 companies here.

It’s not every day that you meet a startup with showcasing technology that sounds like something of out of the Cold War. Like the use of sound waves to transmit data from one device to another, eschewing the need for QR codes, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or NFC. But this exists thanks to the work of the team at Chirp, a group of scientists, acoustic technologists, and engineers that emanated out of University College London.

A Chirp is a sonic barcode. Data and content can be encoded into a unique audio stream. Any device with a speaker can transmit a chirp and most devices with a microphone can decode them. I spoke to CEO Moran Lerner to find out more.

Lerner explained:

“Chirp was born out of extensive research, through which we saw a series of pain points across several sectors that could be solved. it is old technology that we have reinvigorated to help new technologies. Data is encoded into a series of pitches and tones on the sending device and decoded on the receiving device. We refer to this method of transmitting data-over-sound as asmodulation/demodulation. These pitches and tones can be either ultrasonic, or audible where ultrasonic frequencies are unable to work, such as in radio broadcasting, or where the hardware is not capable of transmitting ultrasonic frequencies.”

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Chirp can also extend an existing network infrastructure by creating data-over-audio links between individual devices and a network that is safe to use even in RFD-restricted environments, enabling the connection of the 90% of devices in the world that wouldn’t normally be part of an IoT ecosystem with the 10% of devices that would. This means offer almost unlimited problem-solving possibilities across all sectors, including telecommunications, financial services, IoT, entertainment and broadcasting, interactive gaming, toys, robotics, transportation and many others. Their technology is used by leading brands in more than 90 countries.

For industrial solutions…

Some of the most innovative applications by Chirp are within industrial environments. As Lerner explained:

“We have clients in nuclear energy where radio frequencies are restricted and regulated in a nuclear power plant. By law, you’re not allowed to have any wifi, bluetooth or NFC and so our technology enables them to become smart factories by putting speakers and microphones into those old legacy buildings. If you walk around a tablet in airplane more and start simply getting all that data in real time instantly which actually ends up saving around a billion pounds a day in operations.”

In such environment, organizations can use Chirp, in order to enable personnel location tracking, access and authentication and data reporting from equipment within the facility. This also works in industries where they are working with chemicals and potentially explosive devices and materials in mining, agriculture, and pharmaceuticals.

…and other solutions

Other applications include Shuttl in India for their ticketing and bus transportation solution, global leader Amdocs for their telecommunications mobile wallet and MNO solutions, and Activision Blizzard for their latest instalment of their $3 billion Skylanders franchise – Skylanders Imaginators, using Chirp to share characters from the game directly to the companion app through sound – bypassing the console and completely offline.
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Chirp recently announced a partnership with Unified Inbox to quickly onboard devices onto their platform. The partnership will allow fast, easy, and secure onboarding of residential, commercial, and government IoT devices. UIB provides natural language communications (NLP) for IoT devices. People can communicate with their devices through the communications channels they already use, simplifying the onboarding process. The Chirp + Unification Engine integration layer can be easily adapted and developed for smart home, smart enterprise, and smart city use cases across verticals including energy, public transit, healthcare, waste/water management, home appliances, and consumer electronics.

The challenges of niche technology

Chirp is part of a growing abundance of IoT-related technology that is emerging from University academia in niches that are highly specialized, researched and studied. As Lerner explains:

“It’s a very, very difficult science to master and what puts us so far ahead is our academic strength, that our work is researched by some of the leading academics on the field. One of the problems we are tackling ourselves is the ethics of how you take a solution to market. We’re not trying to be market leaders by marketing our technology as anything more than what it can actually do. We don’t exaggerate what it can do.

See also: Mumbai slums uses beacons for retails sales

We are very open and honest about what it can’t do. But one of the biggest issues affecting the tech sector over the last 5 years with the boom of IoT is that you get a lot of companies coming out to raise a lot of capital and the exaggeration of what they claim the technology can do is mind-blowing, So we’ve got a competitor who makes claims about their ultrasonic technology that breaks every known law of physics. We try to keep away from companies like that. But the reason we’re vocal about it and we try to do things with integrity and authenticity is that a company like that doesn’t just affect us. It affects the industry and erodes the trust in the industry.

So many companies are moving towards academia because when you bring in a team of scientists and academics technologists, they are just born to be honest, and to work within the boundaries of what science allows. It’s not just bringing in people because they can add credibility, it’s the way they develop the technology is based on real science.

It means that when you present it to some venture capitalists they might not like what you say, it might not do what want it to do, but at least you are going to market with something that s not actually going to meet and solve real problems rather than promise to deliver and fail, but that was something that actually needs to. A promise to deliver. ”

We have experienced exponential growth in technology over the last decade, coming to a position of solution-focused technology such as Chirp. It’ll be interested to witness their growth in use cases.

Internet of Things (IoT) is changing the world around us. This may look like a bold statement to many, but that’s the truth. From elevators to planes, there will be 30 billion connected devices in the next three years. Clearly, IoT is moving fast, and tech giants are taking bold measures to constantly push the boundaries of what can be achieved with the IoT.

The recent Genius of Things Summit that was organized in Munich, Germany was a demonstration of how IBM’s unrivaled IoT ecosystem is changing the way we live, work, and play. Here are a few notable developments that caught my interest.

Digital twin

The traditional way of conceptualizing, designing, and developing a product is time- and resource-intensive. Digital twin is an initiative to improve the efficiency of the process by using cloud-based virtual image of an asset maintained throughout the lifecycle. The asset, in turn, remains accessible to every individual involved in the process, thereby allowing people to work collaboratively, reduce errors, and improve efficiency.

Airbus and Schaeffler are the two companies that are currently using digital twin engines and bearings. Airbus is using this technology to create a digital thread that allows different engineering divisions to collaborate. This way, in case a problem is discovered, the company can explore whether the product is due to inadequate maintenance, poor manufacturing, or a fault in the design.

Cognitive commerce

The ultimate objective of cognitive commerce is to offer a truly personalized service to customers based on their precise preferences. To achieve this, a wide spectrum of technologies is used, from speech recognition to machine learning.

Visa is working in collaboration with IBM to offer its customers the flexibility to make payments from any IoT connected device. This, in turn, will eliminate the need to carry sensitive financial information embossed on payment cards, thereby making the customer journey simpler, easier, and more secure.

Predictive maintenance

As the name implies, predictive technology analyzes the data collected using sensors to predict the maintenance needs of an asset. This, in turn, improves asset availability, reduces maintenance costs, and improved customer satisfaction.

SNCF, which is a leading freight and passenger transport service, has collaborated with IBM to connect its entire rail system to the IoT ecosystem. Using the data collected from sensors, SNCF will be able to predict repair and maintenance needs of its trains and tracks, improve the security and availability of its assets, and reduce the downtimes associated with unexpected downtimes.

While the Internet of Things (IoT) has the power to change our world, we are still at the beginning of the transformational journey that will revolutionize the way we live and work for the better. In the next few years, we can expect to see incredible advancements being made by tech giants, such as IBM and other companies.

Virtual Reality garnered plenty of headlines this past year. Most of the coverage – from former President Barack Obama virtually visiting Yosemite National Park to Fox live streaming the Super Bowl – focused on the entertainment possibilities inherent in the technology. But many companies and organizations are taking advantage of Virtual Reality for more practical reasons: VR training apps.

See also: When virtual pets roam our houses

According to TrainingIndustry.com, $160 billion in North America and over $355 billion worldwide was spent on training in 2015. The total expenditures have grown every year since 2009. Those numbers indicate a robust market for companies providing training services, but also one that is ripe for disruption by technology such as Virtual Reality.

VR has a lot of strengths that make it a natural fit for training: it’s immersive, interactive, memorable, and scalable. For large scale training, you can distribute VR apps easily through a combination of cost-effective headsets like Google Cardboard and an iOS or Android app. For more in-depth training, requiring long-form or high-quality video, the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Samsung Gear VR provide the perfect hardware.

John Alonso, owner of Inlet Shores Group, now offers VR training app creation and distribution as a core service offering at his consultancy. He turned to the technology when a client approached him about training employees for a job they would be performing. “The classroom training, the extensive videos did not give an adequate representation of what the job would be like,” according to Alonso.

Enter virtual reality.

Alonso’s team now specializes in creating long-form 360 training apps, particularly for Gear VR. Beyond just capturing immersive video, they augment their content with titling, narration, and animations. The mobile Samsung phones and headsets they use to display the training apps are easily distributed across multiple office locations.

One of the early adopters of Alonso’s VR training approach has been a division of the government. “Our Federal customer had been using video-based learning for multiple years,” Alonso said. “While video can be effective, it does not put you ‘in the place.’ It doesn’t provide the fidelity that was required. The only other solution was going to the physical place, but this was not financially viable.”

Among the many benefits to utilizing training apps is cost savings. Bringing in trainers, or transporting employees to a different location, involves both real costs (airline tickets, hotels) and intangible costs (lost productivity time). The location and time independent nature of VR makes it so students or employees can learn through VR in a classroom, at home, or practically anywhere. For budget-conscious clients, like divisions of the government, the cost savings can be substantial and important.

VR works best for dangerous situations

VR training is also particularly well-suited for recreating simulated dangerous situations. UK-based Cineon Productions, started by University of Exeter Professor Dr. Sam Vine, is creating immersive 360 experiences for “safety critical” jobs. Beyond just replicating a dangerous environment, they’re also taking an analytical approach at user interaction with the VR experiences, looking at eye tracking data.

This allows them to predict during a real emergency where the employee focus might be, and subsequently, help train employees on how to better approach the real situation in the future. If you’re able to correctly act in a simulated environment, the theory goes, you’re more likely to replicate that in the real world.

The market opportunity for production companies and consultancies looking to get into VR training is robust. At Inlet Shores Group, one client went from a small prototype with 10 headsets deployed to increasing their content 15x and deploying over 200+ Samsung Gear VR headsets.

The cost to the content producer, outside of the additional headset hardware, is not significantly more than traditional platforms. And with web-based VR app creation platforms, like my company’s, the editing and deployment time is no more than traditional methods, and sometimes much faster.

As the cost of Virtual Reality publishing goes down, and the number of head-mounted displays purchased increases, expect more companies to embrace the power of VR for training. It’s a natural fit for an industry that, outside the introduction of internet-based learning, hasn’t seen much disruption since the turn of the century. And the results so far have been positive. According to Alonso, “There is real excitement around VR training apps. We hear repeatedly how it is ‘more than they expected.’”

This article is part of our Virtual Reality series. You can download a high-resolution version of the landscape featuring 431 companies here.

A good treadmill for home use costs around $1,000. A treadmill for use in a health club could be ten times more expensive. Why would club owners agree to pay so much more? Because they understand that the home equipment would not withstand the heavy use in a club.

The same is true for VR goggles. Goggles for home use are not suitable for sustained use in arcades and amusement parks. Both VR vendors and attraction operators need to understand and address these differences.

Durability is one key issue. A goggle in an amusement park is subject to both accidental and intentional abuse. A kid might try to see if a lens can pop out. Someone else might wish to take a component as a souvenir.

See also: How VR training apps are becoming reality

Hygiene is also important. VR experiences can be intense, and parks can be in hot and humid areas. Whether it is sweat, suntan lotion or something else, a guest does not wish to wear a soaked or dirty goggle. This is true not only for the face mask, but for any built-in headphones.

Sweat and humidity might also cause fogging on the lenses. If a guest has to take off the goggles to defog them, the break in VR immersion degrades the experience.

Depending on the attraction, visitors can be of all ages. Good physical fit is important, regardless if the visitor is a small kit or a large man. Goggles must accommodate a wide range of head sizes, and eye separation. Eyeglasses also present a design challenge. Visitors prefer to keep them on, so goggle vendors try to make room for them.

Beyond the customer-facing experience, there are important operational considerations. Attractions make money by providing a unique experience to a large number of visitors. Every minute spent by a guest adjusting straps in a roller-coaster, is a minute lost. Some have reported a 30% decrease in guest throughput after upgrading a roller coaster to VR. A larger park crew assisting guests or maintaining headsets means larger operational costs.

There are several different types of public VR experiences, each with unique challenge. A free-roam experience (e.g. Zero Latency) needs to address backpack PCs and controllers. Themed experiences such as The Void have accessories that supplant the story. These accessories have many of the same challenges. A small attraction in a shopping mall cannot afford a large operating crew. A VR roller coaster might need a chin strap to keep the goggles on the head. If a VR roller coaster relies on standard phones, they might overheat or need to recharge often.

Often, the first instinct of those building VR attractions is to do everything. They might try to build their own goggles, create content, or even a tracking system. Over time, they focus on their core competencies, bringing external vendors for everything else.

Testing is a work in progress

The first generation of these solutions show the immense promise of public VR.

VR Coaster, for instance, has deployed GearVR-based roller coaster experiences in over 20 parks. These use a special tracking system to determine the position of each car at any time. The Void and Zero Latency use backpack PCs to allow guests to explore unique spaces. Talon Simulations provides flight and driving simulations in malls. IMAX opened a VR center where guests can try a variety of 10-minute VR experiences. Most of these first-generation solutions use consumer-grade hardware.

Operators realize that many problems still need solutions. At the same time, consumers learn what they like and dislike in current solutions.

HMD vendors are also rising to the challenge. ImmersiON-VRelia has developed phone-based goggles that feature a reinforced plastic construction. Sensics released goggles with detachable face mask to address both hygiene and operational efficiency.

What’s missing? Low-latency wireless video solutions to get rid of cables. Faster ways to adjust goggles for guest. Better methods to clean goggles between guests. Phones that don’t overheat. Multi-user experiences with a stronger social aspect. The passage of time to see what works and what doesn’t. VR standards to help integrate new devices into compelling experiences.

I am excited what public VR experiences could be. My excitement comes both from a user standpoint – these experiences are fun! – and also from a problem-solver view – the problems are challenging.

Try these experiences next time you can. Going to a movie theater provides a different experience than watching at home. Going through a good public VR experience is beyond what VR at home provides.

This article is part of our Virtual Reality series. You can download a high-resolution version of the landscape featuring 431 companies here.