#29: Ultraleap. Digital Worlds that Feel Human.

One problem in the digital world is: We cannot feel the interaction.

Prof. Sriram Subramanian is working on solutions for this problem. He has spun out Ultraleap from the University of Bristol. The company translates the research into products for the digital world.

In this episode, I will talk with Prof. Subramanian about real-life applications for his inventions, the importance of touch for well-being, and the potential for the life science industry.

Speaker:
Christian Soschner (https://www.linkedin.com/in/christiansoschner/)
Sriram Subramanian  (https://www.linkedin.com/in/srisub/)

Organizations:
CS Life Science Invest (https://lnkd.in/eyhWK7H)
UCL (https://www.linkedin.com/school/university-college-london/)
Ultraleap   (https://www.linkedin.com/company/ultraleap/)

Timestamps:

 (00:00:00) Sriram Subramanian on Ultraleap, touchless tech, and digital worlds that feel human
 (00:01:29) What mid-air haptics is: creating the sense of touch with ultrasound
 (00:04:24) From UCL student project to Ultraleap spinout: how the company started
 (00:07:01) Building a deep-tech company: IP negotiations, capital, and early customer pressure
 (00:10:25) “Fundraising never stops”: the real financing lesson behind scientific spinouts
 (00:12:24) Why the pandemic made touchless interfaces suddenly urgent
 (00:14:23) How touchless kiosks work in supermarkets, ATMs, and public machines
 (00:16:17) Beyond Minority Report: how tactile feedback makes touchless interfaces usable
 (00:17:51) Acoustic levitation explained: floating objects in air and building real holograms
 (00:22:01) Touchable holograms, digital hugs, and the future of human connection online
 (00:29:46) Life science use cases: drug delivery, predator-prey research, and acoustic control
 (00:36:20) Telemedicine and remote surgery: can doctors one day feel holograms?
 (00:46:26) Virtual conferences, trust, and the missing magic of serendipitous networking
 (00:49:34) The next big challenge: scaling holograms and making the tech mass-producible
 (00:52:04) Advice to scientific entrepreneurs: use the university as a soft landing and take risks 

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Transcript

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Sriram Subramanian on Ultraleap, touchless tech, and digital worlds that feel human

Christian Soschner 0:00

Welcome to a new episode of the Beginner's Mind Life Science Get Together podcast. Today on the call from the United Kingdom is Professor Sriram Supramania, and I hope I spell your name right. Welcome to the show.

Sriram Subramanian 0:17

Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Christian. Yeah, I'm excited to be here.

Christian Soschner 0:22

Good to see you. How is you in London currently? Is that right?

Sriram Subramanian 0:27

Yes. Well, I don't physically live in London, but yes, uh, that's where my job is. Yeah. How is at University College London? Oh, great. How is life in London currently? Um well, we are all going through the lockdown in different ways. Uh, hopefully we will come out of it nice, uh, but we have to see. Um, so I at the moment uh things are slowing, uh, are okay. So that's uh positive. And I think the number of cases are going down here as well. So uh yeah. Uh we're getting ready for Christmas, whatever that may be, and how that holiday season is going to look.

Christian Soschner 1:03

So yeah, we are all curious to find out. It's the same here in Austria. Um, but regardless, I think uh we are currently in a time where everybody is going online, so it's it has really given a great push towards the digital world. And tell me a little bit more about your research. I think you are exactly in that space.

Sriram Subramanian 1:28

Uh yeah,

What mid-air haptics is: creating the sense of touch with ultrasound

Sriram Subramanian 1:29

that's right. So I'm a professor of computer science at UCL, and um uh we work um in a research area called human-computer interaction. So we are interested in creating new types of computer interfaces for connecting people, for making it easy for humans to interact with computational systems. Uh, and and specifically in my case, I'm uh I work in this uh area called mid-air haptics. So we are trying to recreate the sense of touch, but without touching anything, right? So that's uh uh uh very important these days. Uh but I've been working on this topic now for the last 10 years. Um, the idea is uh we want people to um to um to get the sense that they're touching and feeling objects, which is very, very important. Uh but uh we also don't want them to uh physically make contact. So the way we do that is we use uh uh ultrasound. So we create uh ultrasonic speaker arrays that um uh generate um uh uh acoustic patterns, and when uh when these patterns hit your hand, you can feel them. So as if I were to give you an analogy, this is a bit like uh you know, if you go to a rock concert and you feel the music in your chest, right? So you can feel it literally, you can hear the music, but you can also feel the music in the chest. Yeah, yeah, a little bit. But um uh so uh what we we are doing is instead of uh feeling it in your chest, we give them uh the uh sound in your hand so you can feel it. Uh and then and you also don't want to hear the sound uh sometimes, so we moved ultrasound. Yeah, that's that's a great thing. That's mostly what we do.

Christian Soschner 3:15

Yeah, that is a great thing. Um since when are you doing this research?

Sriram Subramanian 3:21

Uh so we started this work in 2010. 2010. Uh yeah. So uh we uh and slowly working our way through the different aspects of it. Uh I I think uh sometimes you know great things come from naive ideas. So uh in 2010 we thought this should be possible to do. Uh and and uh I I I had an undergraduate project student and I told him to do it. Uh and and then we I think we slowly realized that this is bigger than uh one undergraduate student working on his project. Um so yeah, that's uh where it all started uh as an undergraduate project.

Christian Soschner 4:01

Really, really small scale, so one person working on that. And uh in the preparation of this podcast, if I got it right, uh five or six years later, in 2015 or 16, you pushed the idea so far that uh you could spin out a basically a company from uh was uh almost right.

Sriram Subramanian 4:23

Uh

From UCL student project to Ultraleap spinout: how the company started

Sriram Subramanian 4:24

but what uh the timing is slightly different though. Yeah, yeah. Uh we um uh it was 2013 that we spun the company out. Actually, just a week ago, we celebrated seven years. Congratulations company. Yeah, thank you. Um so we um uh so Tom Carter was the undergraduate project student at the time. Uh I I think I convinced him that uh it's a good idea to do a PhD after the undergraduate. So he stuck around for the PhD uh on the condition that he can also do a spin out if the idea is interesting. Uh I said, well why not? That sounds like a great thing to do. Uh and and uh wow, 2013 seemed like a right moment for us to um to spin the company out because we had lots of interest, commercial traction, uh, and and uh yeah, and you had you had commercial traction already three years after starting with the idea.

Christian Soschner 5:19

That's amazing.

Sriram Subramanian 5:20

Uh yes, yeah. So we I I think we were quite lucky because we were able to uh demonstrate a proof of concept prototype really uh in three years. Uh uh yeah, he was a hardworking, amazing uh student. So uh he we had a prototype that was uh that we could demonstrate. So we also got lots of press interest. Uh and and all of that meant we actually had uh companies coming and asking us if they can buy it.

Christian Soschner 5:51

Even before founding the company.

Sriram Subramanian 5:54

Uh yes, even before founding the company, yeah. And and and part of the process for accelerating the founding of the company was we realized that it was not like one-off request, right? I mean, sometimes you can you can get a request from someone saying, Oh, can I buy your product? And then you think, oh, this is an amazing idea.

Speaker 2 6:10

Let's start a company. Yeah, you start the company, and the next thing you know, there's only one client for you who wants to buy one of your thing, and that's it.

Sriram Subramanian 6:17

Uh, but no, I I think um we we had sustained uh interest and request. Uh but I I think it's uh it's um it's a two-way street, isn't it? In a way, uh we were looking for those opportunities because we knew that there is something uh uh on this idea that could be commercially exploited. So because we were also looking, we were receptive to uh those uh uh communications from different companies and things came together nicely.

Christian Soschner 6:48

How how was the process of uh actually founding the company? You had already commercial traction, founded the company, and which challenges did you did you find on this way?

Building a deep-tech company: IP negotiations, capital, and early customer pressure

Sriram Subramanian 7:01

Uh well challenges are many. Uh I think that's uh uh uh uh that in a way it keeps you uh interested and and uh it keeps you going. Um if it is all you know rosy, then probably you will lose interest quickly. But um some specific challenges were um uh you know, so we uh we had to spin out the company from the university, and there were uh IP negotiations that had to be done with the institution. Um then uh yeah, you need to raise capital uh uh for the company, and that's uh uh something that uh takes a while. And uh in the early days of any business, uh when you have clients and customers who want to buy something, they know that they have the upper hand. So they're always waiting, right? They are interested, they say, Oh, uh, this is an amazing idea. I want to buy it, but can you do this little thing, please? And and uh uh if you are naive, um uh and and and uh I I would say that we were both or three of us, we were three co-founders, were quite naive, and we would go and start implementing all the requests that we got uh until we had the first uh investor coming and telling, guys, just tell them to buy what you have now here, pay the money. If you want it, take it, otherwise, we will go talk to some other client.

Christian Soschner 8:25

That's that that's a that's a great point. I think Apple is doing it quite interestingly. Uh, they put a new version on the market every year, so all requests uh are put in that. Did you go did you go the same route with your product so that you make a version one, version two, version three?

Sriram Subramanian 8:40

Uh, we are not so much a software company as a uh devices company. So that I mean, of course, uh to a large degree that is happening, inevitably, because um you first have one product uh and then you realize okay, this this is a one size fits all solution, and that's not how it works. You need to customize it for different markets and segments, and then you start giving uh options to people, right? So you customizable or different scales and variations and so on. So we do that as well. Yeah. So how was how uh so now the company is doing that a lot, yeah.

Christian Soschner 9:15

Yeah, how was the fundraising process initially? How did it go?

Sriram Subramanian 9:21

Um, so we uh we have to say the um uh the it was very good. In I mean, I described it as a challenge to spin out of the company and you know, like do the all the investor uh founder agreements and uh share share agreements and so on. But at the end of the day, it was helpful to go through that process because uh the university was on your side, and being a university spin-out meant uh the university was helping us in the beginning to uh to get in touch with the right investors and and uh and there was also seed funding available uh from uh from university sources, so that was very helpful uh in getting us going.

Christian Soschner 10:03

Um it's quite interesting. Uh, I think the fundraising process when when somebody's spinning out the technology from university is key to success. How much time did it take to um from the from the idea from the first realization that you and your team and your co-founders need money until you really get got the money on your bank account?

Sriram Subramanian 12:07

Uh, you know, it's never finished. That I think is the one realization uh uh uh that I have come to

“Fundraising never stops”: the real financing lesson behind scientific spinouts

Sriram Subramanian 12:16

is uh you're always you always get enough money to keep going, but as soon as you finish your round, you need to start getting ready for the next round of funding because you know the money is going to finish soon. Right? Uh so yeah, uh it's never uh finished. Uh in the beginning, uh the university had some agreed uh agreements with um uh with a pre-seed investment company, the IP group, uh and they uh they gave us uh uh they they gave us some funding to to get the prototypes out uh as uh development kids and uh demonstrators to different companies, but also they they helped uh Tom develop uh his uh leadership and mentoring skills and so on. So and so that was also very useful in uh in helping us grow the business. So uh it was not just about giving us money, it was more than giving us money, right? So that was very useful.

Christian Soschner 13:11

No, that's good. I mean, investors that usually work in that spot have a lot of uh a good network, a lot of know-how themselves, how to run a company, how to build companies. And I worked in many VCs companies as an executive, and I always loved the coaching from VCs because they really help to focus the team on what's essential and uh it's about the point that you made, I think, is very is really key to success that you said you said um fundraising never stops. Fundraising, so once you close the rounds, you you have to be ready to the next round. And I think this is sound advice to all scientific entrepreneurs to not see it as a one-off event. Let's switch a little bit from fundraising to the technology. You founded a company in 2013, you closed the round and uh you celebrated seven years. Uh, how far did the technology advance? What are the applications that you see to take it?

Sriram Subramanian 14:06

Um well, so you know, in back in 2013 when we launched the company, I mean, I have to say we didn't think that uh uh that there would be so

Why the pandemic made touchless interfaces suddenly urgent

Sriram Subramanian 14:15

many customers and clients interested in the idea, but even for those who came, it was a future uh uh musing, let's say, like so something interesting, let's try. Uh um and like I said, the idea is that you don't have to touch anything, uh you you have gesture control and you get haptic feedback with the gesture control. Uh and and I would say uh until last year there was uh um uh there was uh a steady good interest from different companies, be it gaming companies or uh you know kiosks or uh VR applications and so on. But uh uh in a good way or a bad way, the current crisis brought everything to its head, right? I mean, today uh we don't have to ex, I don't have to explain to anyone the importance of touch. Everybody understands, right? The newspapers are full of how uh grandmothers are not able to hug their grandchildren and the sense of touch is important, and and and yet contact, physical contact is tricky because uh of the spread of uh germs, infections, whatever that may be. Um, and so uh everybody understands the need for a touchless system that will enable you to touch something. So uh so yeah, today there is a lot of uh appetite and interest uh from uh uh ATM machines to you know railway station uh uh ticket uh counters uh to uh cinema kiosks, they all want to uh fit their uh um uh their kiosks with uh uh touchless interfaces. So uh there's a lot of other touchless interfaces.

Christian Soschner 16:01

How the how does it look like? How does it work?

Sriram Subramanian 16:05

So the the um so imagine that you go into um um um a supermarket, right? So now uh nowadays it's possible that you can have a um uh you

How touchless kiosks work in supermarkets, ATMs, and public machines

Sriram Subramanian 16:14

you can do a self-service checkout, right, in the supermarket. Uh and uh typically that self-service checkout is uh is a system where you have to press buttons, right? So you say how uh whether you you confirm that all your items in your uh bag has been scanned, you confirm how many bags you have, you you you say whether you want to pay by credit card or uh how you want to pay. So you know all of these are interactions that you touch the screen. Um and and uh what we offer is a solution where you don't have to touch the screen anymore. You wave your hand in front of the screen, okay, and the screen detects your uh hand gesture uh and and it gives you tactile feedback. So you so you know you confirmed your you've done your actions correctly, so you get some feedback on your hand, uh, and and you can you can finish your interaction with that kiosk without actually touching uh most of the kiosk.

Christian Soschner 17:12

This would be amazing because currently politicians and scientists are pushing towards that direction uh that because of SARS-CoV-2, we should avoid uh touching anything in public. So it it reminds me of a of a movie with Tom Cruise. I think it was uh 20 years ago or something, Minority Report, where he basically pulled up in front of him uh all the interfaces, and you always wondered how he can how he can feel where he's touching, because you see it, and then you don't know did I hit it or did you not hit it. If I got it right, you really can simulate uh the point where you usually touch the interface so that the user knows exactly the point in time when uh he hit the right or she hit the right button.

Sriram Subramanian 17:58

Is that that's right, yeah. So we we can uh we track the fingers using camera. Uh and and so there's a there's a difference between minority report uh scenario

Beyond Minority Report: how tactile feedback makes touchless interfaces usable

Sriram Subramanian 18:09

uh and the scenario that uh we live in today, right? Uh uh firstly, if you watch the movie carefully, uh the uh uh Tom Cruise in that movie was wearing a glove. Uh so that it was easy for uh the system to see his hand and to do the tracking, right? Uh you don't need to do that here, you don't need to wear anything. So just walk up a news. Okay, first thing. Second thing is uh so it was it's difficult in in any visual uh environment to convey the sense that the person uh uh has received a tactile feedback, right? So so in the in that uh minority report movie, he actually physically touches the glass panel. Uh you don't need to touch anything here. So you um you wave your hand in front of it and and you receive uh uh some notification on your palm to let you know that you are um uh you're you're engaging with the system in a way you anticipate. So so you have uh a mental model in your head of how you should you think the system is engaging with you, uh, and and that's confirmation coming from the system to let you know that that's the way that's going, right? Uh but you're not physically touching uh anything.

Christian Soschner 19:28

That's amazing. What what what could be the future of this technology?

Sriram Subramanian 19:33

Um, so the the uh there is a um there are two elements to the future, right? So um when you think about um uh so I I mean let me draw an analogy with

Acoustic levitation explained: floating objects in air and building real holograms

Sriram Subramanian 19:42

uh um if you think of uh just for simplicity, with if you say Amazon, right? Um so there's two ways to think about Amazon, right? So in the past, uh someone would have characterized Amazon as a book selling online bookstore, right? And and and uh and and and and that is that is you characterizing Amazon through the lens of an application, which is bookstore. Uh there's another way to think of Amazon, which is a cloud infrastructure company, right? So that is through the lens of the technology that it core technology that they have. So I think uh as an academic, at the end of the day, I I'm still back in my research lab and I am working uh in my research group. Uh the uh I'm always looking for what are the new opportunities for the tech that we do. Um and and the um uh so so we use the same uh platform, um, but now we can instead of giving you the sense of touch in your hand, uh we float objects in air. So uh so you if you have a small object that that is uh uh placed in that field, yeah, that object is going to experience the same forces that your hand was experiencing before. So I can levitate these objects. Really? That's amazing. Uh so uh so we do uh acoustic levitation, uh, and through that acoustic levitation we can um uh we can create uh not only a haptic device but we can have visual device as well, right? So uh so we float uh a small polystrain bead in air, and and and I can update the position of this bead uh at 40,000 frames per second, right? So we can move it really fast, so fast that your eye doesn't see anymore this bead moving, but instead it sees uh um uh some object in front of you. So it's a floating hologram. Uh and and so we are uh so we do this kind of uh uh volumetric display. Uh and and um so that's something that we're working on. So we're working on creating fully multimodal uh displays where you can have this hologram, you can touch it, you can feel it, you can hear from it as well. Uh so that's uh one of the futures, and I think uh uh we are hoping that uh we can uh uh uh we can create uh um uh applications where people have a fully immersive experience with such a device. Um and and at the same time, we are also looking at uh um more sophisticated uh applications of uh of touch itself. So can we create uh empathy and uh uh well-being and and and emotional aspects of touch, right? So that's something that uh uh the company uh and and my lab with other collaborators across Europe uh are looking at. So we want to uh we want you to really feel that you are hugging and touching someone uh digitally, not just uh some fake tactile feedback.

Christian Soschner 22:54

There are two things that I really like in your explanation. One thing is the let's start with the technical thing before we come to the to the life science part. Uh I think it really amazing this this hologram that you were talking about. So you're hovering with uh with sound waves an object in the air, and you can't can paint pictures. Yeah, so it's it reminds me a lot of uh of Star Trek.

Sriram Subramanian 23:19

Uh yeah, so that's true. I mean a lot of people draw analogy with uh Star Trek, Star Wars, whichever is your favorite program. Yeah, uh and and and uh uh again I think we do better than uh both of them. Yeah, so uh if you think of um uh uh well let's go with Star Wars, right? So uh the uh

Christian Soschner 23:42

uh the the princess leia uh scenario that people always imagine right uh coming uh the hologram coming out and asking for help

Touchable holograms, digital hugs, and the future of human connection online

Christian Soschner 23:52

uh so the um uh a lot of people only focus on the visual hologram right and and and uh and and uh you can have a speaker that plays the sound which doesn't seem such a complicated thing uh but the the advantage of what we do is that hologram uh you can also feel it right so you can bring a hand close and you will feel the objects and you will feel everything there and the hologram speaks itself so it's not that you have another speaker that's going to generate the sound sound is going to come from the hologram so uh so it's a fully multimodal in that sense so it would be an I mean at the ultimate stage it would be let's let's stay with the technological stuff a little bit I'm thinking about architecture for example when architecture draw plans uh I mean they are it's the beginning what I read on the internet um that they have now software where they can fully uh draw 3D models and your technology could enhance this process basically and bring them really to life so that people can touch it can feel it can flip it around can see it can zoom in and zoom out is that is that really possible uh i i i think so yeah i i strongly believe that we can uh reach that uh that's uh scenario where uh you can uh interactively engage with your content uh not worry about uh how the technology works just yeah focus on the interaction scenario i mean you brought up uh minority report as uh as an inspirational movie uh scene uh and and uh if we go by the same uh arc then uh you know um iron man had this scene where um uh uh you know he uh tony stark is manipulating this mist and fog yeah yeah yeah uh that kind of a that is an architectural setting so you can do the same thing so very much you can uh pick it up you can feel it you can interact with it and and uh the technology blends into the background and you focus on your task yeah that's that's a great thing when we go now to the to the picture that you painted with uh princess Leia in in Star Wars I think one of the problems people currently with the lockdowns I mean we have the second one in Austria one problem they experience is not meeting friends not meeting families and uh it's a little bit lonely so not being able to touch other people and I think one important part of the human experience and it's also necessary in my opinion to stay healthy is basically really being in touch with people so let's dig a little bit deeper into this application uh do you really do you really are you really confident that you can create uh holograms of people that other people can touch and that you can feel so for for example holding hands yes I I I think so the uh um there are two elements to that right first is a technological know-how of creating uh a tactile sensation um so so uh that means that when I put my hand in a particular location I want to be able to feel something right uh I I I think we are uh I I feel more confident that we are there in terms of being able to do that. Uh what I'm less clear and which is where more work needs to be done is what does it mean to be able to do that right so I want to shake your hand now right digitally I I can easily give you a uh a piece of tech that sits on your side and I can have a piece of tech on my side uh that can recreate whatever is sent uh right so whatever you send me as a touch I can recreate on this side but the problem is what should we send what is that when I put my hand in front of you every every wrinkle in my skin is holding onto your uh hand I don't even know what is this most salient feature of this handshake right okay is it the fact that I'm gripping you tight is it the fact that my palm is making contact with your palm yeah what is it and and and and you know the way we shake hands just a simple handshake conveys a lot of emotion right uh leadership authority uh everything comes through just this handshake and and and uh as an engineer the first thing I worry is I don't even know how to capture that nuance and without that it'll be a very simple uh uh simple rubbing of your hand because I don't know what to send uh and and and people will sometimes mischaracterize that as a failure of the technology in in in delivering the sense of touch but I would say that that is a a failure of our understanding of what it means to deliver that touch it's the technology will do whatever you want to do but uh we know what to do I think these are new questions I mean and up to now it was not necessary to think about uh transmitting touch to a different location when I think about the healthcare system I mean I have a few ideas in mind for example telemedicine is on the rise yeah uh with the lockdown and uh once a physician told me that basically he can uh do all the diagnostics remotely so he doesn't uh need to be a patient but there is one aspect uh in the interaction with the between physician and patient that uh patients are more confident in the healing process when they feel the touch of the physician so when we uh solve these uh let's say philosophical questions what to transmit and how to how I how a handshake or how a touch feels uh basically you could really enhance diagnostic with your technology so yes yeah absolutely and and in fact I I can give you another example which is not so not of uh not telemedicine it's more everyday Monday thing um so they've they've talked about um some quite a few years ago so I don't know if it's still current or relevant or not but uh where uh if you are a waiter or a waitress uh if you touch the person uh in the restaurant on their shoulder you will get a better tip yeah so uh so you know the sense of touch is important so you uh all you have to do as a as a uh way uh as a waiting staff is just uh um uh gently tap the person uh who's dining in your restaurant uh to show them that you're friendly and and you you will get a better uh uh tip from them so uh uh you there's a lot of things that touch is important for yeah and and in fact we we even use the word let's stay in touch uh even though uh we don't actually physically touch each other uh yeah no we have I absolutely agree we are living in a physical world so I think generations of human beings were dependent on each other they had to form communities for the mere fact of survival I think uh the world hundred years a few hundred years ago was very hostile and uh I think this this touching uh is part of our human nature and also um changes the hormones in the body so I think this is also scientifically proven in my opinion.

Sriram Subramanian 31:28

Yeah yeah yeah yeah absolutely yes and and it's uh the uh that's how even like babies and uh um they can distinguish the

Life science use cases: drug delivery, predator-prey research, and acoustic control

Sriram Subramanian 31:37

touch of their mother from the touch of strangers uh and uh an important part of uh grooming in uh primates or monkeys is uh you know uh the uh the uh the the oh uh they establish hierarchy by uh grooming the hair and that's a very uh sensual uh but important process uh so yeah uh it's very important and and we don't understand enough uh the the the science uh uh as well as the uh the engineering of uh that yeah no i think there's a lot of research that still can be done did you did you talk with the pharmaceutical industry already about possible applications uh the pharmaceutical industry well i mean i i think uh medical devices company or wellbeing companies are more uh are closer to uh this kind of uh um technology uh uh pharmaceutical companies have approached us yeah in the past but not so much for touch but for the levitation side of things right so uh uh I think there is some uh interest in exploring uh drug delivery uh in the uh so uh one of the uh the visions uh would be that uh you can uh you can encapsulate uh a drug in a capsule and and you can acoustically deliver deliver the drug to specific locations in the human body and then release it there. So that uh yeah yeah yes yeah so so you we can use sound I mean we are not anywhere near being able to do that uh uh with the technology itself because um uh there's it's uh it's a complicated the human if if you want to control something inside a human body there are different uh uh mediums and it's difficult to do that but um yeah the the uh the pharmaceutical industry has contacted us in the past for that um we we also get a lot of requests from life science research groups uh who are interested in uh suspending in free space uh um uh some insect or some uh prey to see how a predator might approach the prey uh to understand uh prey predator relationships um and and specifically to also understand how the the genes in that prey or in the predator evolve uh or have evolved right so uh there are a lot of applications there and and uh every times it's it could be a zebra fish it could be a fruit fly it can be a dragonfly uh yeah so uh we get such requests as well to try yeah let's stay a little bit creative uh we got a question from the audience uh from Dwayne Holland and I will hand you to Mike Dwayne welcome to the show so hello there hi um fascinated how are you doing yeah good thank you um I thought you were just gonna read my question but I'm happy to uh say it um yeah I'm really impressed with the technology thank you for the the talk oh you're welcome thank you mentioned very briefly um but I'm just wondering how you could simulate the sense of touch to a specific individual that you mentioned that um uh a touch of a mother's hand um is very different to maybe you know a father's even um you didn't use that example but I'm wondering how you could get a specific individual because it's very nuanced and how you then um capture that type of information to make it very personal. Yeah well that's that's what I was trying to say uh to Christian that that is a challenge we don't know how to capture uh that information right uh and yet somehow our human body is able to capture that information information so when I shake my hand uh uh with you or with Christian or uh someone else uh I can capture all kinds of information just from that touch even if we are blindfolded um so uh I I think there is a a lot of science that could be done uh to uh to understand how the different mechanoreceptors in our hands respond so mechanoreceptors are the different receptors in our hand that respond to pressure and touch um so yeah so that's possible and and and to be fair there are many research labs that are looking at this aspect uh but we we have we've not been able to fully integrate uh uh the whole pipeline right so from some sensory stimulation happening in my hand to how this information gets sent all the way through to the body and what happens in the brain and how is that all integrated and integration happens in a in complicated ways because sometimes you can have uh uh have visual information so I can see something and what I see may contradict what I feel and then my brain chooses uh consciously or subconsciously to to to listen to one channel of information and ignore the other channel there's the uh rubber hand illusion I don't know if uh people have heard of that uh it's uh it's where um you know so you you uh you have a uh a dark screen and your hands are through that screen so you don't see your hand anymore but then you see a digital uh avatar of your hand um uh and uh whenever you move your finger the digital avatar moves exactly like it's your hand uh and uh and then uh somewhere in the middle someone comes and chops that uh digital avatar's hand and people shriek and pull their hand out even though you knew from the beginning that this was not real. So uh uh yeah so so the there's all kinds of fascinating illusions and uh um uh integrations that happen uh and and part of this challenge is going to be to understand how to bring all of that together. Yeah so I don't have a simple answer on how we do that.

Christian Soschner 38:01

Uh um and I think what I was trying to say is that the simple answer is in once you tell me how to do it or what is it that's being captured

Telemedicine and remote surgery: can doctors one day feel holograms?

Christian Soschner 38:11

uh uh the technology can be made ready to deliver that kind of information thank you you're welcome um let's stay a little bit with um with the potential applications that uh you can do especially when it comes to to healthcare um I think of uh searches surgery might that be a possibility uh yeah so uh yeah you mentioned telemedicine before as well and uh um yes so uh surgery is um uh is a very interesting and promising uh avenue to explore there are um uh there are a couple of aspects right so one could be actually in uh in a surgeon in um in a comfortable hospital uh or in a uh comfortable setting doing teleoperation uh at a remote setting uh the other uh so and and so there there are all kinds of challenges and and and it's possible to explore uh um a remote uh haptic feedback um and and and there are some companies that are doing such such explorations um the other thing could be uh uh education so uh uh uh if you are uh if you're doing uh neurosci uh brain surgery training you cannot uh open the brain uh every time someone wants a training right so that's true uh there might be uh there there might be many uh uh uh avenues there right so what one possibility is that a surgeon is doing something uh and and and and today you what you have is galleries right so and then uh medical students are observing from a gallery uh what's going on uh and and another opportunity is for the medical students to feel what the surgeon is doing so they also get and that's a very important uh element so surgeons always have to feel uh as much as they uh they have to uh precisely operate uh and and yeah I mean this is one of the use cases I heard in the from the 5G world that which is usually brought up uh the best surgeon from the United States can then do surgery remotely when the patient is in China or in Japan and they always thought uh how can it happen because they they really don't feel when what what they touch and what they move they just can move the technical stuff but don't get any any tactile feedback. So with your technology that could close that gap. Yes yeah I think I mean uh it's uh it's not just our technology there are many uh uh many companies that are uh specialists in uh remote surgery uh support uh and and you know surgeons are use anyway a specialist tool tools for many things right and and if you ask them to perform even if it's a remote surgery if you ask them to perform just with the hand without those tools they will not be able to do it so they need that tool even if the tool is just a prop, they they need that tool and and uh what uh some of these teleoperation companies are doing is they are giving uh uh uh tactile feedback to the uh to the surgeon through those tools and props so the advantage in in those settings is that the person is touching something so through that thing that you're touching you can give them the feedback um whereas in some situations you cannot touch and then you still want to have that feedback yeah yeah so I mean in the education setting that you mentioned and when we bring it together with this uh princess uh layer uh picture from Star Wars so if I just make it up in my mind it sounds like that you fully can get they can draw a full hologram of a real person uh with in high detail and that surgeons can then practice with the hologram uh in a future vision and fully feel and experience uh what they are doing is this did I get it right yes yeah yeah yeah you got it right you put it much better than me uh uh but uh yes I I think that's uh definitely possible the challenges uh uh in in that scenario right now are uh the size of the hologram right so uh this the holograms that we can do today are quite small i mean they're big compared to the state of the art in hologram technology but uh uh people are used to bigger size objects right so if you're talking about uh a patient on a table that's uh there will be some challenges in uh um generating that size hologram yeah but it's it's an interesting and achievable challenge I mean this is an all-training situation I mean that there could be many every every time when you can can draw a hologram and make it touchable the I think the applications are endless unlimited yeah so yeah yes uh self-driving cars for example I mean the the the big vision is that uh Tesla or NEO or uh Chili or BYD that we basically uh are not in the driver's seat anymore but in some situations it would be very helpful and I always thought how will how will it do that because how how does a future car look like if it's self-driving we don't need the driver's seat but uh when a person in the car needs to take over you have to simulate then the uh the console and with your technology you could do that yes yeah yeah we can do that uh I I think uh this in self-driving cars the uh it's very easy for the car to say oh I don't know what to do you're the driver take care of it yeah right but obviously the situation that the car is encountering is quite complicated otherwise if it's a trivial situation the car can handle the situation right uh so if it is not trivial and the and the responsibility has to go to the driver then the driver probably needs a little bit more time to understand what is the situation.

Sriram Subramanian 44:23

Yeah right uh and and that so you can find nice ways in which you can interrupt the people and uh ask uh uh um ask them to gracefully take control before it becomes you know like uh before the car is like okay you have two seconds now you want to kill kill that uh child or do you want to yeah yourself by hitting the tree that's yeah impossible uh I'm exaggerating but yeah yeah that's true Duane has another question so Duane I unmute you hello again hi um I was just wondering how strong of the sensory feedback someone would actually receive so um so there's a sense of touch and then there's also a sense of actually holding something as well which I'd imagine you have pressure and so I was just wondering would could someone feel lifting a heavy weight in a gym for instance yeah so that's an excellent question yeah um so I've been quite uh careful to use the word tactile feedback um and and and uh so when you talk about the sense of touch or haptics there are two types of feedback right there's force feedback uh um and there's tactile feedback force feedback is uh when you you are holding something but also all your muscles are being engaged Engaged. So the technology that we are developing in my lab and my company, you will not be able to have the kind of resistance as if you're lifting a weight in the gym. So that's not going to happen. The sensation is quite light. You will definitely notice that there is some feedback, but the feedback is not enough to restrain you or stop you from doing something. It's mostly a notification or sense that you um your skin has been stretched in different ways, so you know something has happened. Where some of the things that uh Dwayne was asking are uh stopping the person from completely doing something that won't yeah. Thank you.

Christian Soschner 46:24

I mean, there was this um lifting weights in the gym. There was uh in in Star Trek, there was this um Holotech, holotech so where people could draw up entire worlds. Uh do you really think this is feasible to push uh the research that is going on in that field and the developments uh where you are part of, that we really can make that possible?

Sriram Subramanian 46:51

Um yeah, I I mean I I think uh there are many already. I I feel like Google and so on have uh what they call a holodeck or their interpretation of the holodeck in their uh offices in San Francisco. Um but uh the the the vision of holodeck that you are describing, and that's in Star Trek is a little bit more sophisticated, but it's certainly doable. I don't really I don't I don't think there's anything challenging or uh that is stopping us from creating those scenarios except the scale, right? Um and and uh and and part of the scale, uh creating that size holodeck environment is going to be what are you going to use it for and how much can you afford to pay for something that that's going to be the issue, and uh from uh progressing the knowledge or the of a particular discipline or uh uh understanding more the science, you don't gain that much by pouring millions into making such a big uh holotech, uh, but small, like one person in front of them, it's possible. And yeah, and that's enough to study um the engineering challenges around it.

Christian Soschner 48:07

Yeah, I mean there's one thing that I miss. Um so my life basically until last year was that I traveled the world for conferences to get in touch with investors, with the

Virtual conferences, trust, and the missing magic of serendipitous networking

Christian Soschner 48:17

pharmaceutical industry, with scientists, and I think there are 10 to 20 key conferences in the world, and most of the contacts um I had were accidentally, um, just being in a room with a few thousand people, so in large halls, and having a coffee with them, and talking and shaking hands, and this is all guns march, so everything went digital, and it's it's a different dynamic. I mean, I like it, I like talking to people, so I enjoy this conversation we're having right now, but I would prefer to have it in person to see and uh also to feel the people and also have uh an audience in a room and not just virtually in a chat box. Um, one application that uh could could bring that back would basically what you say. Uh I mean let's just assume we money is not an issue. So having a fully touchable virtual conference with hundreds and thousands of people that are basically holograms.

Sriram Subramanian 49:17

Yeah. Yeah, uh I think that yes, so that that means you you are um uh you have a full size or some kind of an avatar of you uh and and uh the that's engaged in that virtual world somehow. Uh I think this is something that people are looking at, and you're absolutely right, right? The uh one of the advantages of attending those face-to-face events is the serendipitous networking opportunity that people got. Uh and and and uh maybe those kind of conferences are not as attractive now as they were before because serendipity is almost gone from the equation. You're you're going to go into uh even if you have breakout rooms, you're going to go into the breakout room where you think you have the best chance of meeting someone. And and and and you were doing that even before in a live conference setting, but uh there were more uh chances of you to bump into different people, yeah, and there was an opportunity for someone to just walk up to you and start talking to you, uh and and and virtual worlds offer that uh to the best they can. Uh, and and and uh yeah, that's something that uh people are looking at uh different virtual uh like I think Mozilla uh has a uh a virtual world, uh and there are other virtual worlds as well.

Christian Soschner 50:41

So yeah, yeah, I think interesting space touch is also important to build trust between people I oversee. Digitally, digital is one way, but this this I think there is more trust building in the process when people are in the same room physically. Um when we we stressed it a little bit further. I mean, we can come up probably with with endless visions, what would be possible, but what are the current challenges right now that you face at the UCL and that ultra leap your company is facing? What are the immediate challenges that you need to solve?

Sriram Subramanian 51:15

So I I I think um uh from uh our research group's perspective, the um we are we're looking at how to scale the size of the

The next big challenge: scaling holograms and making the tech mass-producible

Sriram Subramanian 51:25

holograms we can generate. Um so um and and maybe uh reduce our reliance on um or reduce the the amount of hardware resources we use to generate. So we want to cut down and so that we can make it more mass producible in a way, right? So that's something that we're looking at in our lab. Um and and from a company's perspective, yes, I think uh the ch the interesting challenge would be to see if it's if you can integrate holograms uh into the uh uh into the offering, right? So right now people can clearly see a value add for uh keeping touch and for touchless spatial interaction. But uh to uh to ask them to uh to to or to to if you were thinking about like a kiosk or a cinema uh uh booking machine, would you really want to have an hologram in front of you? Uh it's not uh uh clear what is the value added there from uh purely transactional interaction. So uh I I think I think that the company might uh think about what are those uh uh non-transactional interactions that people might want to have where such technology can be useful. Uh yeah, I think that's uh uh that's an interesting uh problem to explore.

Christian Soschner 52:55

So it's it's more the more the philosophical aspects, basically, what people want, uh how society works and how people are satisfied in the in their customer experience. Um we are coming close to the to the end of the talk, so we we said one hour. And uh I would like to ask you the final question and also give a call to the audience whether they have one or the other question uh popping up. Um you started your company in 2013, and uh I know that in the audience of the podcast, um, we have a lot of young scientists who are tending in the same direction to become a scientific entrepreneur. What key advice is, what free key advice is would you give these young scientists?

Sriram Subramanian 53:46

Oh wow, yes, uh it's a good question. Yeah, um, so I I I think one of the first things I would say is um that there are

Advice to scientific entrepreneurs: use the university as a soft landing and take risks

Sriram Subramanian 53:55

there might be challenges in the journey, but that uh always the journey is entertaining and it's uh good learning experience. So I've enjoyed a lot and I've learned a lot. So uh don't be afraid to try, right? Uh and especially if you're scientists and you have a university infrastructure and a system in place. The great thing is universities now recognize the need to allow people to explore those commercial opportunities. So uh they all they always have a scaffold uh and and they provide soft landing for you. When you fail, you're coming back to the soft landing of the university environment, uh, which you cannot get uh easily anywhere else. So use it, and and and that is again um going back to the point of don't be afraid to fail, right? And I think uh uh so so then the third advice is uh what anyone in the uh business world says, right, try fast, uh fail fast and move on. Right. So if you have this uh this urge to see whether your idea is a commercially viable proposition, just go for it, find out if it works. Uh, and if it does, then well done. If not, nothing wrong. I mean, uh you tried, gave it a good shot, and it's time to go on to the next adventure. I think those would be the things that I would say are lessons I learned.

Christian Soschner 55:29

Sound sound advice. Uh just don't be afraid, people go out to things. Uh, let's assume we are talking about the future. So let's assume that uh also time travel is possible. And uh you could have the chance. So let's say maybe Tesla or uh or Google brings that up and makes it really happen. So you have a chance to travel 10 years into the future and uh meet your future self in in 10 years' time, and uh you can have a conversation with uh your future self and ask one question and say, uh, what was the most important goals and actions that you set in 2021 that made you successful? What would be the answer of your future self to that question?

Sriram Subramanian 56:17

For the what did you set in 2021? So, what did I set next year that I would feel is uh take risks, yeah. I think that would be the uh I think that uh that would be my uh I'm I'm uh I I I believe truly in this notion that uh being in an university environment gives you the soft landing that you need. So uh aim for the sky. Uh I mean, yeah, so I I would say that that that is the philosophy that's ingrained in the way I work, and that's probably what I would be doing in 2021. Aim for something big. Uh and uh, you know, if you aim for the sky and you miss it, you will still be on a treetop. But if you aim for a treetop and you miss it, you're still on the ground, so it doesn't really help. Yeah.

Christian Soschner 57:11

So it's also something it's also something Bruce Lee said uh that goals are not always meant to be achieved. Just aim high, have big visions and go for it. Sidam, thank you very much for your time and for your talk. Uh, all the best for your for the development of your company and your research at the UCL. I'm looking very much forward to find your technology once it hits the stores in Austria.

Sriram Subramanian 57:38

Yeah, thank you so much, Christian. It was lovely to talk to you and uh great to uh uh to hear from the audience as well. So yeah, fantastic. Thank you so much. Take care. You too, have a great day.

Christian Soschner 57:49

Bye bye. Bye bye. Thanks for listening. Please, please share the podcast and make sure you've subscribed. Have a great day.