It all started as a challenging puzzle and a passion to solve it.
Mobile devices today are incredibly powerful, capable of performing myriads of functions, yet they lack the ability to measure physical distances, a glaring omission for something so fundamental. We believe that distance measurement is an essential capability that should be within reach on standard smartphones and tablets, without the need for specialized hardware.
In many outdoor sports and activities, measuring distance is routine. Laser rangefinders are widely used for this purpose, with devices from established brands costing hundreds of dollars. These rangefinders offer varying levels of precision, often tailored to either short or long range applications depending on the sport or activity.
Beyond sports, distance and size measurements are crucial in industries like construction, surveying, and even the military. Here, industrial grade devices are often used, costing orders of magnitude more and offering specialized functionality embedded directly into the hardware. These rangefinders do not necessarily provide better precision but are equipped with domain specific features essential for their intended applications.
This led us to an intriguing challenge: how can we replicate the essential functionality of rangefinders on standard mobile devices, achieving sufficient accuracy without relying on built in lasers? While some devices feature LiDAR or Time of Flight (ToF) sensors, they are limited to very short distances. However, mobile devices have powerful processors and a diverse array of sensors, including cameras, gyroscopes, accelerometers, magnetometers, and more, that could enable them to match, and even exceed, the performance of traditional rangefinders in some respects.
As of now, we believe to have a viable solution to this puzzle, one that opens up a wide range of real world applications. As we continue developing this technology, we are also discovering a plethora of high value use cases that we had not anticipated at the outset.
