At present, the price of HoloLens 2, a benchmark product for MR glasses, is 27,000 yuan, and magic Leap's MR helmet is basically around 30,000 yuan. Two years ago, Canon released enterprise-grade MR glasses called MR S1, and Canon recently released a new enterprise XR headset called MR X1. The device will go on sale in June this year. The equipment deployment price of THE ROYAL X1 is expected to be 3.5 million yen, equivalent to about 176,000 yuan. In addition, the product is not priced in the official store, and the final price is likely to be determined by the channel side, but the overall price will also be more than 100,000 yuan. Canon's sales target is to sell more than 1,000 units a year in Japan by 2025.
The MREAL X1 is equipped with four front-facing stereo cameras on the front end, two arbor-looking capabilities for mixed reality views, and two for depth sensing and position tracking. The device supports head-mounted mode and can be used with one-handed/two-handed holding via a dedicated handheld unit (handheld unit sold separately).
Canon's positioning of equipment is the B-end market, mainly manufacturing (especially automotive) and construction, but also covers medical and entertainment fields. So it makes perfect sense for the device to support both head-mounted and handheld modes: the headset mode is used at the time of design, providing visitors with a convenient handheld mode when displaying products on site.
The MREAL X1 weighs approximately 359 g, is approximately 186 mm (width) in size× 150 (depth) × achieves 250 mm (height). Canon notes that this small and lightweight design can support long working hours, with a display area of approximately 2.5 times larger than the MREAL S1 to reach 58 degrees × 60 degrees (45 degrees ×34 degrees for S1) and display resolutions of approximately 1920 x 2160 for one eye and 3840 x 2160 for both eyes.
Of course, the device can be connected to the mobile workstation through the data cable (which is an important reason for the small and lightweight overall line of sight of the system) and can be taken to a variety of places for use. For example, on an outdoor construction site, the people involved can share what the building will look like when it is completed.
AR China interviewed AR hardware veterans, let's listen to what the industry thinks of this sky-high AR device?
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AR China: What do you think of the pricing of this product? Will the real BOM cost particularly high?
To be honest, this pricing equivalent to RMB is indeed too high, but it is understandable that in addition to the reason for the exchange rate, mainly because such pricing should also be included in the cost of research and development, like this type of hardware products are basically to be 5,000 to 10,000 units to do even sharing.
The various parts and structural costs involved in this, to some domestic competitors to see the BOM cost is about 1300, but the external everyone is also 2000 + BOM cost to communicate with the channel, after all, everyone's estimated shipments are very impressive, take a brand as an example If it is not based on the estimated number of 10,000 units to share, it should not control the BOM cost at 1200.
For this product, I personally think that the BOM cost is estimated to be about 2,000 yuan, of course, this is also based on the more distinctive supply and marketing channels in China and a very considerable shipment. First of all, the real perspective of this product will not be too large, and the declared perspective can only be realized when it is very close. However, the production process requirements are also relatively high, which is understandable to lead to the rise in BOM costs.
Secondly, the product is mainly a display driver and two sets of camera chips, the main data processing analysis is on the PC connected, which means that the overall cost will certainly not be tens of thousands, but the current market climate is that the price of ToB products can only be high to be graded, and this pricing is much higher than the BOM cost.
Of course, the advantage of this product is that it can see the real world through the camera, and the delay will definitely have, depending on the actual effect. In addition, the dual camera positioning in the production is more complex, the structure deformation is particularly sensitive, generally on the outside to add aluminum alloy skeleton, so the weight is difficult to reduce, the use of split wiring may also be a feasible solution to the short-term computing power limitation.
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AR China: What do you think of the technology route of Canon MR glasses and Microsoft HoloLens?
In terms of use, it should have its own advantages, HoloLens equipment is integrated, through the Ideal see through the way to achieve AR effect, the nominal field of view angle diagonal about 52 °, of which the horizontal field of view angle of 43 °, vertical field of view 29 °, monocular display pixel resolution 2K, HoloLens 2 the whole machine weight of 566g. The canon MREAL X1 mentioned above has a viewing angle of 58 degrees × 60 degrees, which still has certain advantages as a Video see through mode field of view. However, THE ACTUAL X1 is a split design, and uses the PC host as the computing unit, which is obviously not a problem with computing performance, which is more convenient in Canon's view, because there is no need to worry about device standby. But obviously some aerial work dragging a host is definitely not OK. But as Video see through there is a very important point is that in the outdoor use of actually do not have to worry about light problems, he is through the integrated inside the device Oled display unit for imaging, the scene seen is seen through the camera shooting, a bit like VR. But all Optical see through devices are basically scrapped outdoors under strong light (plus a black hood is a little better). Another point is that the MREAL X1's wide-angle lens allows for a larger field of view than the HoloLens 2. Since Canon's equipment is a split, the weight must have some advantages over the all-in-one machine, but it is not much lighter.
As for the price, I personally think that Canon's pricing is too high, although it seems that it does have its advantages in some aspects compared to the current benchmark MR products, but overall the current products must not be the ultimate form. At present, there should be no AR hardware companies in China, and the domestic split design will basically choose to use mobile devices as a split computing unit, generally Android systems. In addition, most companies in the optical direction still take optical perspective as the main research and development direction (industrial AR Riowell is still mainly based on video perspective or auxiliary reality), and optical waveguide will be the mainstream research and development trend. But Canon's competition may soon appear in some VR companies, and the use of video perspective in VR devices to achieve MR is actually a thing that many VR companies are planning to develop. Combined with the design of the all-in-one machine and the current 6Dof capability, it is estimated that the advantages of Canon's device should soon be gone.
However, although the pricing at 170,000 sounds exaggerated, I personally think that it should be possible to complete the sales target of the expected 1,000 units, and as a practitioner, I still hope to see Canon's products enter the Chinese market.