Augmented World Expo has been running for 15 years, and still no one can decide what to call spatial computing
Today’s the final day of AWE 2024, tech’s premiere spatial computing conference.
This year featured literally hundreds of companies, 15 tracks, and more than 30 hours of talks, panels, and other events. You’d be hard pressed to get a better snapshot of the self-identified “spatial computing” landscape at this particular point in time.
And…it shows that there continue to be major disconnects in how different players are thinking and talking about spatial computing.
I did a naïve dump of the talk schedule into a word counting app, and here’s a very quick and dirty summary:
✅ “XR”, “immersive,” and “spatial” are the most frequently used spatial computing terms, closely followed by “VR,” “virtual” and “AR.” “XR” (at >2x “immersive”) is as close as it comes to a winner, but in my experience this term isn’t used by anyone outside the industry.
⚠️ “Metaverse” shows up with moderate frequency, along with “augmented,” “mixed,” and “extended” (as in “augmented reality,” “mixed reality,” and “extended reality”).
🛑 Literally no one uses the old preferred terminology of “ubiquitous” or “ambient” computing.
Surprising no one, “AI” (not shown) comes in almost at the top of the list this year, higher, even, than the word “immersive.” And there is a great showing of AI at AWE 2024, from AI-generated content within spatial computing experiences, to spatial computing as input to train physical AI models (more on this in a future post).
Haptics, of course, shows up a fair bit as well, along with a good amount of OpenXR and web3 tech.
I’m glad AWE exists, but it continues to be a niche event dominated by the same few enterprise giants and a whole lot of very specialized startups. What I don’t see represented is the ways that sensing and spatial awareness continue to be integrated into everyday technologies, such as smartphones and wearables.
If this is your space and you’re looking to figure out what the latest spatial computing tech means for your customers in practical terms, let’s get in touch!
And if you aren’t currently thinking about spatial computing, don’t be put off by all the “XR” ballyhoo. It’s not all headsets and haptics. At its core, spatial computing is about what we all want: more contextually aware devices that better respond to user needs.