eWEAR Symposium, September 2023

Dr. Piao has more than 30 years experience in HVAC industries. His work ranges from fundamental study of environmentally friendly refrigerants, new technologies of heatpump system, building energy efficiency, carbon reduction, etc. 

Dr. Piao built and led an innovation team in Silicon Valley since 2014, to help Daikin to create new data driven business. His recent focus areas are IAQ (Indoor Air Quality) and Carbon neutrality in buildings.

Daikin is a global leading company focusing on HVAC systems for built environments. Buildings are one of major focus area of Daikin. There is a huge opportunity for sensors in built environment, especially in the context of decarbonization/electrification, human comfort, and office worker productivity. Both opportunities and challenges will be discussed.

Alastair is DigiLens’ chief optical architect, being responsible for R&D development of DigiLens’ core holographic waveguide technology. This includes development of DigiLens high performance waveguides and holographic fabrication equipment & processes suitable for high volume scalability. He has enjoyed working for DigiLens since 2011 in the dynamic, exciting, and now rapidly developing XR/AR industry and in defining the future roadmaps for DigiLens technology, and possibly for the future of us all!

Over the past 25+ years Alastair has held senior and principal optical engineering positions with BAE SYSTEMS, OPTICS1/SAFRAN, and Panavision, where he has successfully innovated, designed, built, tested and deployed an extensive range of optical solutions. Alastair’s broad optical experience includes commercial, defense, visible, infrared, imaging, illumination, classical and holographic / diffractive optics.

Alastair holds a BSc.(Hons) in Optoelectronics and Laser engineering from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, and an MSc. in Electronics from University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK.

Smart glasses to provide a digital layer to augment your world are available today, and are rapidly getting closer to an everyday reality for everyone. Waveguide technology enables this to be achieved and has widely been adopted as the preferred approach. Yet the question remains in many minds as to what is the best waveguide optical technology to enable this. The demands are considerable, including consumer expectations for high quality images set by today’s incredible flat panel displays, with yet higher expectations set by digital layers used by Hollywood’s characters. To meet highly anticipated consumer demands a solution that enables high quality optical performance, quick design, rapid scalability, while also achieving this at consumer price points is required. In this talk an introduction will be made to DigiLens’ holographic photopolymer technology and manufacturing approach, and to explain why DigiLens is ready to provide that solution today.

Jason Hartlove is a technology executive with over 35 years of experience developing and bringing to market first of a kind optical systems and technologies. Currently Vice President of AR Displays at Meta, he leads all development work to bring the Metaverse to the human visual system, including teams with expertise in perceptual image science, image processing, optical and traditional semiconductors, light engines, optics, waveguides, sensors, prescription lenses and novel manufacturing techniques including additive manufacturing. Most recently he was President and CEO of Nanosys where we pioneered the development of Quantum Dot technology for displays, with over 60 million units shipped across over 800 different consumer and IT SKUs from nearly every major brand in the world. He is a prolific inventor named on more than 100 patents including as co-inventor of one of the most ubiquitous technology products of the last 20 years, the billion-selling optical mouse. Previously he led product development at Hewlett Packard, ran Agilent’s 3,000-employee Malaysia-based manufacturing operation, and was a founding executive team member at MagnaChip Semiconductor, setting the company on a successful path to an IPO.

Virtual, Mixed, and Augmented reality platforms are creating the next step in the computer platform evolution. Building this new paradigm of wearable, all day persistent computing platforms requires understanding the five human senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. The biggest challenge and largest opportunity in wearable electronics today lies in mimicking the way these senses work to create the sense of reality we need to convey virtual content seamlessly blended with the real world. While this spans myriad technologies, in this talk Jason Hartlove will introduce this topic and cover a few of these development focus areas.