CrowdOptic, Inc. (known as CrowdOptic) is a privately held San Francisco-based

medical technology Health technology is defined by the World Health Organization as the "application of organized knowledge and skills in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, procedures, and systems developed to solve a health problem and improve quality of liv ...

company founded in 2011. CrowdOptic, led by CEO Jon Fisher, is best known for its augmented reality technology and triangulation algorithms used in medicine, sports, and government that gathers and analyzes data from smart devices based on where they are pointed to identify areas of interest. As of 2016, CrowdOptic remains the only patented solution for wearables like

Google Glass Google Glass, or simply Glass, is a brand of smart glasses developed and sold by Google. It was developed by X (previously Google X), with the mission of producing an ubiquitous computer. Google Glass displays information to the wearer using ...

and Sony SmartEyeGlass.

History

CrowdOptic was founded in 2011 by Jon Fisher, Jeff Broderick, Doug Van Blaricom, and Alex Malinovsky. The company analyzes data from mobile devices to identify hot spot activity and connects Google Glass footage to live video feeds. The technology is in use by professional sports, medicine, and government including for emergency response, fire and public-safety workers. CrowdOptic's investors include Silicon Valley Bank,

John Elway John Albert Elway Jr. (born June 28, 1960) is an American professional football executive and former quarterback who is the president of football operations for the Denver Broncos of the National Football League (NFL). Elway played college f ...

Eric Yuan Eric S. Yuan (; born 20 February 1970) is a Chinese-American billionaire businessman, engineer, and the chief executive officer and founder of Zoom Video Communications, of which he owns 22%. Early life Yuan is the son of geology engineers. He ...

, and Ronnie Lott. The company has raised $5 million in funding. In 2015, the company was named one of the most well-established of the 10 current Glass for Work partners. In July 2015, 9 To 5 Google announced that the CrowdOptic was in acquisition talks with a Fortune 500 firm. In 2016, CrowdOptic released its first in-house developed hardware product, the CrowdOptic Eye, a device that streams video through the company's video streaming stack with the push of one button. In October 2016, CrowdOptic launched Field App through the Google Play Store to "triangulate on a point of interest and broadcast its GPS location to a command center with live-video verification." The application uses a cloud-based system,

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a Radionavigation-satellite service, satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of t ...

, compass and live video and smart sensor data to coordinate emergency responders, firemen and police. In August 2017, the Houston Chronicle reported that Hewlett Packard Enterprise and CrowdOptic reached a deal to combine CrowdOptic's augmented reality platform and triangulation algorithms and Hewlett Packard servers in its

internet of things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...

lab in Houston, Texas. Following a partnership with National BioSkills Labs, CrowdOptic's technology is deployed by

Medtronic Medtronic plc is an American medical device company. The company's operational and executive headquarters are in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and its legal headquarters are in Ireland due to its acquisition of Irish-based Covidien in 2015. While it ...

, HPE, and Zoom.

Applications

The company is a founding certified Google Glass partner with its technology also in use by Sony, Vuzix and Microsoft. CrowdOptic develops algorithms which let smartphones and wearables live-stream from locations such as hospital operating rooms or sports stadiums.

Sports

In 2014, CrowdOptic partnered with the Sacramento Kings to develop an alternative view of basketball games using

. The company broadcast Google Glass video footage from the perspective of players and cheerleaders on the Jumbotron and mobile devices. This technology was also implemented during warm-ups by the

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

basketball team. The company also partnered with the

Indiana Pacers The Indiana Pacers are an American professional basketball team based in Indianapolis. The Pacers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Central Division. The Pacers were first esta ...

to use the technology. The footage was broadcast from the video feeds of team employees wearing Google Glass. CrowdOptic has agreements with the Philadelphia Eagles, and Sony for SmartEyeGlass to use the technology. In August 2014, CrowdOptic partnered with NASCAR's International Speedway Corporation to broadcast live racing and behind-the-scenes footage from Google Glass. In 2016, CrowdOptic deployed with the Denver Broncos at the

AFC Championship game The AFC Championship Game is the annual championship game of the American Football Conference (AFC) and one of the two semi-final playoff games of the National Football League (NFL), the largest professional American football league in the world. ...

in Denver, Colorado and at the Super Bowl 50 at Levi's Stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Medicine

In June 2014, CrowdOptic announced a partnership with the University of California, San Francisco to stream procedures by UCSF Department of Orthopaedic Surgery faculty. The company announced in July 2014 that ProTransport-1, a California-based medical transport provider, would install Google Glass in its ambulances. Google Glass uses CrowdOptic's software to send a live video feed from an ambulance to a destination hospital. CrowdOptic also partnered with

Stanford University Medical School Stanford University School of Medicine is the medical school of Stanford University and is located in Stanford, California. It traces its roots to the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, founded in San Francisco in 1858. This ...

. The software is used to live stream surgeries to doctors and medical students wearing

. The data from the live stream is owned by Stanford University. In 2017 the company debuted a live-streaming platform for medical practitioner training at National Bioskills Laboratories in San Francisco.

Government

CrowdOptic's technology has been deployed with NASA to enhance the launch and landing of a

lunar lander A lunar lander or Moon lander is a spacecraft designed to land on the surface of the Moon. As of 2021, the Apollo Lunar Module is the only lunar lander to have ever been used in human spaceflight, completing six lunar landings from 1969 to 19 ...

and provide live streaming for incident response. In 2016, the company paired with Solford Industries to market a low-bandwidth live-streaming device integrated with a conventional firefighter helmet in use by fire departments, police and first responders in both the United States and China. In September 2016 CrowdOptic also deployed augmented reality for United States Special Operations Command for field personnel to report to central command about specific targets including the

location and a live stream of the target using CrowdOptic's triangulation algorithms. In November 2016, CrowdOptic combined its augmented reality technology and algorithms with Portland-based SicDrone unmanned aerial vehicles and Suspect Technology's facial recognition technologies to enable emergency responders and law enforcement with state-of-the-art surveillance and identification technology. Vice Magazine reported that the drones "fly fast, record faces in real time, recognize patterns in traffic and pinpoint people who are in the middle of an emergency."

Advertising

CrowdOptic joined with cosmetic company L'Oreal to market its products at the

Luminato Luminato Festival, Toronto's International Festival of Arts and Ideas, is an annual celebration of the arts in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, launched in 2007. In its first decade, Luminato presented over 3,000 performances featuring 11,000 artists fr ...

festival in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. L'Oreal's virtual art exhibit generated analytics that showed where people were aiming their phones.

References

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External links

Official Company websiteDon't write off Google Glass, says Silicon Valley CEO, inventor, entrepreneurHow CrowdOptic's Tech is Revolutionizing Sports Broadcasts, Business, & MoreCNBC on CrowdOptic's use in professional sports
Software companies established in 2011 Companies based in San Francisco Technology companies of the United States Social information processing Crowdsourcing Augmented reality Augmented reality applications Defunct software companies of the United States Software industry Military technology Eyewear companies of the United States American companies established in 2011