The London-based technology start-up could change the face of advertising forever with the development of this affordable yet scalable alternative to holographic technology.
Three-dimensional, slightly hypnotic holograms may soon replace two-dimensional signs and ads. Several companies using this technology agreed that 3D holograms will revolutionise the way businesses and brands talk to potential customers. And, why not!
A ‘one-of-a-kind’ video technology – Hypervsn Wall – that allows the generation of 3D holographic advertising visuals of up to three metres high was on show from Kino-mo Ltd. at IES 2018. Named by Mashable as ‘the future of retail displays’ the Hypervsn technology allows 3D videos to appear as if floating in the air, perceived by viewers as hi-resolution holograms.
The solution supports common videos files such as MP4 and MPEG. It is made up of individual projection units and a proprietary management platform that allows users to manage a network of devices remotely from a single location. Retailers can automatically synchronise visuals on several units and schedule campaigns via one click.
Last year, the global sports shoe brand Nike evinced a new advert in Amsterdam, which emerged as one of the greatest head-turner. In fact, in order to demonstrate the flexibility of its new Free model shoe, Nike unveiled the world’s first holographic 3D advertisement, dubbed as the Hyperviosn Wall or Holocube – a 70-inch transparent screen that can be viewed from both sides. Thus, the shoe-major pronounced the beginning of an all new era to be followed by a lot more digital signage showing product in life like 3D.
It’s all because of the advancement in technology that led UK-based Keno-mo Ltd. develop a product, christened as Hypervsn! So, what is Hypervsn? It’s a cutting-edge LED-based visual system for creating, managing and displaying 3D video content wherein the images resemble high-resolution holograms floating in mid-air. The LEDs on the blades spin fast enough so the human eye cannot detect the movement, and only see a coherent image.
The system uniquely combines a smart Hypervsn Management Platform and a Hypervsn Projection Unit, which looks like a propeller with LEDs fitted down in its blades. The projection unit plugs into the mains, can be fitted onto any wall and is fixed at any height up to 3 meters from basic eye level. Because it uses LEDs, the display is relatively unaffected, unlike a projector for example, by the harsh lighting often seen in retail environments.
Kino-mo, a London-based start-up with its office in Belarus, has triggered the hope of tech fans with this innovative technology that came to life with Hypervsn. And while other iterations of holographic technology have required expensive setups, elaborate configurations, and large dedicated spaces, Kino-mo promises a cost-effective and scalable alternative that would change the medium forever. While not technically considered holograms, these 3D visuals float in the air just like the real thing.
“New, hi-tech and scalable visual technology was long overdue and the market of digital displays needs alternative solutions,” as Art Stavenka, cofounder of Kino-mo has been quoted as saying in her interview with Business Zone. “Holograms could have filled the gap by astonishing viewers and effectively delivering advertising messaging, however, they are simply unavailable for the mass market due to extortionate costs, and difficulties with setting up and content creation.”
In another instance, Kiryl Chykeyuk, the other co-founder at Kino-mo, has been quoted as saying that Kino-mo’s mission is to bring impactful, groundbreaking solutions to businesses around the world. “Visual advertising is at an evolutionary tipping point and that the company finally launched its Hypervsn Wall at ISE 2018 with a clear message for advertisers and big brands to move over traditional billboards.”
Interestingly, Hypervsn has already been named a top technology by the likes of USA Today and Yahoo, and has been used by companies such as Coca-Cola, Pernod Ricard, Procter & Gamble, McDonalds and Carrefour. Going forward, it has been found replacing billboards, LED screens, LCD screens, because there hasn’t been any revolution in the display industry for decades, as claimed by Stavenka.
The main hardware of the technology is a blade that emits a strip of light creating holograms of images and words. Multiple blades can be synchronised for larger holograms. As soon as this piece of hardware spins, eyes stop seeing hardware but a hologram, and the piece of hardware spins fast enough so a human eye does not see any rotation, and it sees the amazing holographic image.
Notably, everything in Hypervsn has been built from scratch. Alongside the single projection unit called Hypervsn, Kino-mo also produces Hypervsn Wall, which is nothing but multiple units joined together to work synchronously allowing the creation of a hologram of pretty much any size and configuration. Report suggests that it is capable of a wall up to 10×20-metres in size.
Software includes a cloud-based CMS, which can manage thousands of Hypervsn units remotely from a single location. It can also schedule content in the way a digital signage player can. The company also produces a 3D content constructor, which allows users to create 3D graphics using standard available 2D assets.
This software helps bypass the need for costly (and time-consuming) 3D video production, which can often be a barrier to adoption. Kino-mo also produces a desktop events application for live events, which controls Hypervsn units in real time for trade shows, festivals and conferences.
According to manufacturers, Hypervsn is all about content, the end users do not have to understand what the technology is made of, or care what kind of metal or plastic have been used in it, all they see is ‘the hologram’. Users must be able to change the holograms when they want, and it must be of the highest possible quality.
Chykeyuk feels that what Keno-mo is offering the world is emotions. “What we provide is a very effective tool to communicate to people. We do that through emotions, we sell emotions, and then it’s up to a brand how to steer those emotions. Some do it to increase sales or incentivise purchase, and others use it to empower the brand image or lure people to particular spot, some just use it to make people happy, for example in live events.”
The vision is such that when people stand and look at Hypervsn holographic visuals for five minutes, they must feel it as much as they see it. This is the biggest difference from what is out there like LED or LCD displays – Hypervsn induces real feelings, it makes people smile, and when these feelings are associated with the brand they are seeing at the time it is very powerful. This would certainly boost the offline retail sector to keep up pace with the growth of online.
Hypervsn is now present in over 60 countries and the product has already found a home in retail, so why does it fit this application so well, and does he see it being installed further afield? As mentioned earlier, retail is there in its mainstream, but also stadiums, banks, casinos and other public places, essentially anywhere one can see standard LED/LCD displays, Hypervsn can be a perfect and efficient replacement.
Some of the users are reportedly making good use of this technology for the events industry, which is totally different to DOOH. In retail it can be used for point of sale material or to replace traditional digital signage. The next step is adding interactivity and engagement with 3D images through gesture and voice recognition. Kino-mo is also in talks to install Hypervsn in train stations for health and safety messages. Because it grabs attention, there are a wide variety of uses for it, from frivolous to critical.
No wonder, offering solutions to retail clients has an obvious query about ROI. Emphasising on the capabilities of Hypervsn to prove ROI, or to help increase brand awareness, Chykeyuk has been quoted, “On one side it’s important that clients are happy, when people look at it they smile and say ‘wow’. On the other hand all brands are looking for numbers and ROI. From our own market research in several countries, we have seen Hypervsn increase sales between 40-150%. We have done case studies with blue-chip brands in the UK and the US where Hypervsn is placed in window displays, and footfall increased between 4-12%.”
On marketing front, the company insists on moving the product through the channel. Kino-mo is currently building up a network of worldwide partners including system integrators, DOOH agencies, events agencies, and value added distributors. Based on the response that Hypervsn received at CES 2017, the company was full throttle at ISE 2018 to get itself in front of as many integrators as possible. At CES 2017, Keno-mo received more than 4,500 emails enquiring about Hypervsn, of which the company carefully choose the right partners who understand the product. “We are a tech company, we provide the product, our partners sell the product,” asserted Chykeyuk.
Launch of Hypervsn™ by Kino-mo
At CES 2017, one start-up turned a lot of heads. Kino-mo, a London-based company, made a big impact at the world’s largest electronics trade show by displaying the closest thing we have to commercial holograms yet. The images appear in three dimensions and use light to make them visible. But, and I hate to say it at this point, these aren’t holograms either.
By attaching high quality LEDs to a rotating mechanism, not entirely unlike a fan, the device quickly spins and coordinates its lights to create a moving imagine for an incredibly realistic holographic effect. With few cameras needed and little setup required, it could easily be the most affordable hologram knockoff out there as well. Tragically though, it’s still a knockoff.
The reality is that holograms are just super hard. So much so that tech companies aren’t the ones leading the pack in their creation; it’s scientists and researchers that are taking the lead. And, if this article has gotten your hopes up a little bit too much, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. In 2015, Korean researchers claimed that they had developed the world’s first truly holographic image: a Rubik’s cube.
The innovation was the result of an initiative put in place by the Korean government in 2013, with the specific goal of developing holographic technology. Thanks to a 16-company collaborative effort led by LG, the technology was developed in just a few years. There are plenty of advancements to be had, as they can’t do much with the image, change the size, or effect it in any way. But hey it was a start.
Then, just a few days ago, researchers at BYU also claimed to have developed something in the holographic realm. By trapping particles and reflecting light off of them, they’ve created “volumetric images,” that is images that take up three dimensional space. This is different from the Rubik’s cube hologram, as it is the first hologram that you can actually interact with.
So we’re getting there! Let’s be honest, we’ve been a bit spoiled with a huge number of increasingly impressive tech advancements coming within the last decade. Wanting holograms is perfectly natural progression of that excitement, but that doesn’t make them any easier to develop. We’re just going to have to hold our breath and realize that our only hope for holographic projections is a little bit of patience.
Hypervsn – The Concept
From a start-up backed by world-recognised investors Mark Cuban and Sir Richard Branson, Kino-mo has grown into a globally emerging company developing and delivering smart, emotionally compelling and visually impactful technologies. Hypervsn™ solution by Kino-mo received an array of awards including Top 3 British Innovations of the Year and was named among World’s 10 Most Impressive Technologies by Mashable and USA Today. Today, Kino-mo is an award-winning British company developing hi-tech visual solutions.
The route that Kiryl Chykeyuk took to get to the AV industry isn’t a standard one, but one reflective of the changing nature of proAV. Born in Belarus and now based in London, the 31-year old techie studied a PhD in engineering at Oxford University looking at the analysis of 3D medical images, and how 3D images of different modalities are formed, and how the human brain processes and analyses those images. These studies, according to him, were the start of what later converted in to the Hypervsn, to see how the human brain can be led into seeing 3D effects in mid-air.
It was in 2012 that Chykeyuk formed his company Kino-mo with childhood friend Art Stavenka whilst in his dorm room at Oxford. A few months after the company was founded, the pair went on the British TV show Dragon’s Den where inventors pitch ideas to business experts for funding, and won €90,000 investment for a product called the video-bike display. The product, which displayed LED advertising on the wheels of moving bikes, also won the Cambridge University Entrepreneurs Award and the Shell LiveWire Award. The pair decided against selling part of the company as part of the Dragon’s Den deal and went it alone. A year later, the pair built the first prototype of Hypervsn, and immediately saw the magnitude and potential of the product.
By then, they had concentrated all of their efforts on building solid Hypervsn technology, resulting in saying goodbye to the bicycle product for this new wonder. In 2015 Kino-mo won the start-up category of the Richard Branson-funded Pitch to Rich competition. Also in that year the company received backing from high profile US billionaire investor Mark Cuban.
In the words of Chykeyuk, “The company has had to grow very quickly to keep up with demand. We now have just under 100 people in our team, including software developers, electrical and mechanical engineers, designers, art directors, marketing and sales people; and two offices in Europe with headquarters in London and a number of official representatives covering North America and Southeast Asia. Only five years in existence, the company is already in profit and has all the investment funding it needs at present.”
References:
kino-mo.com
www.inavateonthenet.net
www.installation-international.com
www.trendhunter.com
www.thepictaram.club