Augmented reality glasses have been hyped excessively in the last five years. With billions of dollars in investment, the technology has resulted in discouraging returns.

Dr. Barmak Heshmat, former MIT researcher and technology conceiver, explains how the public understanding of AR is flawed and what the fundamental physical limitations are on this technology. He argues that there are still major challenges that need to be addressed before AR can be adopted by the market, and then explains the practical future that is waiting for this technology. Barmak Heshmat is the head of optics at Meta, a silicon valley startup that manufactures augmented reality displays for professional use case. Prior to Meta, Dr. Heshmat was a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for four years where he invented the time-folded optics which allows designing optics in the time dimension. His other works include reading through closed books using THz batch scanning technique and Imaging through complex geometries using time-of-flight cameras. Dr. Heshmat has given invited talks at five TEDx events, and numerous other venues and academic institutions.

He has published 22 journal papers and filed 15 US patents. Some of these papers and inventions have been featured on MIT cover page, BBC, TechCrunch and many other media outlets. Dr. Heshmat is also the founder of the ‘Imaginarium of Technology’ (iMT) which is a technical illustration service company that illustrates future technologies This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx