Local start-up BuildAR has made a move into the augmented reality (AR) space, while the rest of Australia is lagging behind other countries in AR adoption.
At the Tech23 innovation awards in Sydney this week, BuildAR co-founder and director, Rob Manson, said many enterprises are investing in AR products but, for the most part, these investments are coming from outside of Australia.
“Australia hasn’t developed much augmented reality and most of our customers are actually overseas,” Manson said.
“We’re a small team, have limited resources, and one of the biggest problems we have is that it is a really complex technology to implement.”
The company is currently working with customers in the tourism and local government space, with Manson saying that the education sector is also using AR.
“Our customers have showed that they are really eager to pay for custom configuration, and we have some customers in the tourism and event space that we are working with right now,” he said.
“We have a wide range of educations that are building AR into their courses and we’ve got a version of AR that’s perfectly customised for local governments all around the world.”
One BuildAR customer, Mosman Council, recently overhauled its ageing telephone system, with the high cost of Telstra tie lines forcing the council to switch to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).
New South Wales deputy premier, Andrew Stoner, also spoke at the Tech23 event, announcing that the government would sponsor local start-ups.
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