Lumen Is a Mixed Reality Projector That Looks like a Flashlight

Slashing your way through dance levels in a virtual reality environment with the Holo Lens, Oculus Rift or Vive is great and all, but the fact you have to wear a headset to experience AR/VR is a pain in the ass and it socially isolates you from the people around you. Interaction designer and engineer Arvind Sanjeev has completely reimagined what’s possible with immersion technology with Lumen, the mixed reality projector that looks like a flashlight. After collaborating with a whole host of experts on everything from AR to LARP (Live Action Role Playing) storytelling, Sanjeev built a platform that classifies objects around you and uses an algorithm to generate stories on top. Shine the Lumen flashlight on a pair of scissors, it will classify them as scissors and then tell you whatever piece of story was programmed to display on top. The prototypes have also been tested in museums, galleries and escape rooms to add another level of exploration that’s just not possible right now. Here’s hoping the technology makes its way to places near us, because this is the kind of tour we’d definitely pay for.