MRiot: Appliance Control

Smart lights, speakers and appliances each come with their own app, and controlling them means finding your phone, opening the right app and finding the right device in a list. MRiot asked whether augmented reality could skip all of that: the control should be where the device is.

This exploration was built for Microsoft HoloLens. Each controllable device gets a round menu anchored in the room beside it. Around a smart bulb, the menu shows a ring of colors and effects with the bulb at the center. Look at the lamp, air-tap a color, and the real bulb changes. Collapsed, the control shrinks to a small bulb icon floating at the lamp, so the room isn't cluttered with panels. Menus can also live at other points in the room, such as a doorway.

The footage was captured through the headset, so what you see in the video is what the wearer saw: the holographic menus overlaid on a real living room, and the real lamp changing color in response.

MRiot grew into a broader platform, including the MRiot Vision Pro Module sensing hardware. The problem it tackles, networked devices that are each an island, is one of the gaps described in our xR ecosystem research.