A technology company that’s developing smart glasses combining augmented reality and gesture control has raised $8.8 million, according to a Form D filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The four year-old business is different from the HoloLens augmented reality technology Microsoft unveiled earlier this year.
Atheer targets healthcare as well as logistics and the energy industry. It envisions its smart glass platform Augmented interactive Reality, or AiR, as a hands-free platform for the operating room or at the patient’s bedside where doctors need to have ready access to medical records without turning away from the patient. It also sees nurses as potential users so they can view medical data from monitoring devices to help them respond to different medical situations.
One advantage Atheer seems to have over Microsoft is its glasses look a little more like glasses than the goggles HoloLens uses.
Soulaiman Itani founded the business, which is led by CEO Alberto Torres. In a recent interview, Torres said the company made working with industries a priority before it will eventually pursue the consumer market. In addition to the smart glasses it has developed, it has opened its Android based technology to developers.
It had previously received investment from hardware startup program Lab IX, a part of Flextronics. Among some of the Silicon Valley-based company’s other investors are Bobby Yazdani, co-founder of Saba Software, and Farzad Naimi, co-founder and managing partner of RONA Holdings.
There are several smart glass entrepreneurs, particularly in the healthcare industry, that believe a hands-free approach is the next logical step for clinicians. Although telemedicine is one area that startups have pursued, others have positioned them as patient safety tools for surgeons in the OR in the form of checklists.
