Blue Vision Labs

Blue Vision Labs, founded in 2016 by Peter Ondruska, Lukas Platinsky, Bryan Baum, and Andrej Pancik, developed a collaborative augmented reality (AR) platform. The company's core technology centered on creating city-scale, persistent, and shared AR experiences through an AR Cloud. This technology enabled multiple users to see and interact with the same digital content overlaid on the physical world through their smartphones.

The platform's foundation was its ability to generate centimeter-accurate 3D maps of entire cities using crowdsourced images from vehicle-mounted mobile phones. This detailed mapping allowed a device to determine its precise position based solely on visual information from its camera, a capability that enabled developers to build shared AR applications for navigation, gaming, and social interactions. The company provided a software development kit (SDK) for both iOS and Android to facilitate the creation of these experiences.

Blue Vision Labs operated in stealth mode for several years before launching its product in March 2018. The company raised a total of $17 million in funding from investors including GV (formerly Google Ventures), Accel, Horizons Ventures, and SV Angel. In October 2018, Lyft acquired Blue Vision Labs for approximately $72 million, with the potential for the deal to exceed $100 million based on milestones. Following the acquisition, the London-based Blue Vision Labs team became the UK hub for Lyft's Level 5 self-driving division, applying its 3D mapping and computer vision technology to accelerate the development of autonomous vehicle systems.

Keywords: augmented reality cloud, 3D mapping, computer vision, shared AR, persistent AR, autonomous vehicles, localization technology, AR SDK, street-level imagery, collaborative AR, city-scale mapping, simultaneous localization and mapping, AR navigation, Lyft Level 5, Peter Ondruska, Lukas Platinsky, GV, Accel, ride-sharing technology, vehicle navigation