MIAMI – Another step for augmented reality and the ability to take any experience and make it even more layered.
In Local 10 News’ latest Technically Speaking report, anchor Gio Insignares introduces us to a Miami startup using the digital space to enrich real-life moments and memories.
There’s something nostalgic and heartwarming about opening up those old photo albums, or now, your camera roll, and reliving major milestones, especially those trips cross country, overseas, or even across town.
Now, with a new creation based here in South Florida, your relationship to certain destinations, and some of life’s biggest moments, could change forever.
A walk down memory lane, or a stroll through the neighborhood, is normally just that, a brief occurrence.
But for Khambrel Roach and Sean Fenton, co-founders of Lifecache, they thought there was an opportunity for more.
“People want to explore,” said Fenton. “They want to be able to leave the home and look at a building or a restaurant, or look at experiences you might have had and be able to relive that, but still continue with life.”
Inspired years ago, in part, by an artist who created a location-based album where listeners could only hear each track by arriving in the spot where the artist linked it to, Roach birthed the idea of Lifecache and connecting the physical with the digital.
“What if I can replace the music and those be the moments of my life, the stories I can tell at locations,” said Roach.
Lifecache allows for that possibility.
It’s a location-based augmented reality platform focusing on elevating life moments and manifesting an entire world around them.
One of the company’s partnerships is with Niantic, a software company best known for creating augmented reality games, such as Pokemon Go.
Users upload their content to a portal, then Lifecache brings it to, for lack of a better word, life.
“What it is, is creating this realism, this illusion of realism that your moments can actually exist in your real world lifestyle,” said Roach. “It’s just much more of an immersive media file type and allows the user actually to feel as if they were there kind of teleporting them back into that experience.”
With Lifecache, you’re able to live in your real world, but technically you can teleport to any location through a headset or your handheld device.
Roach says the company is focused on travel and tourism, but there’s flexibility for anyone to use it.
As a consumer, in a spot like Brickell or Wynwood, Lifecache shows different content all around you, created by the city, by other users, and from there, you can explore.
On the business side, content creators, business owners, or specific venues can upload ads or something similar that is then pushed out to anyone who might interact with it.
“With augmented reality, the goal is to allow you to continue to do what you’re doing in life but have these additional tools to take advantage of the things that are around you,” said Fenton.
But like many startups, the possibility of failure looms like a dark cloud, but it’s not something the team is worried about.
They believe this is a new step in modern technology.
“I’m not actually fearful of failure,” said Roach. “I’m more eager, and I feel the urgency to capitalize on the moment because I know it’s right here.”
Right now Lifecache is still in the development phase, with an expected launch sometime in early 2023.
Lifecache is also partnered with Plantation-based Magic Leap to create an AR headset experience for the company.