Osterhout Design Group, a maker of powerful, augmented reality smart glasses (left) for industrial and enterprise use, this week announced it has closed a sizable $58 million round of funding.

The company plans to use the Series A round to grow its portfolio of AR products and intends to present those plans at upcoming technology conference CES 2017 in January.

Shenzhen O-film Tech Co. Ltd., Vanfund Urban Investment & Development Co. Ltd. and several private investors joined ODG’s principal outside investor and strategic partner 21st Century Fox in this round.

The AR industry represents a rapidly growing ecosystem of wearable displays that “augment” vision by overlaying additional information in a person’s vision. They were pioneered by products such as Google Inc.’s Glass and soon-to-be-released Microsoft Corp.’s HoloLens.

“For eight years, we’ve taken a very systematic approach to designing and refining our smartglasses for specific applications from the U.S. government, industry and enterprise customers in a wide variety of markets, and that will not change,” said Ralph Osterhout, chief executive of ODG.

Market analyst Digi-Capital reports that the AR market is predicted to reach $90 billion by 2020. The firm also mentioned that currently augmented reality appeals primarily to an enterprise focus, with most AR products for consumers launching around 2017. The report says AR hardware, in particular, will lead the market with nearly a 45 percent chunk.

Osterhout Design Group’s smart glasses product, the R-7 Smartglasses, is an Android-based mobile device that weds powerful onboard computing using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805, a full-color HD screen readable in sunlight, stereo audio, location awareness and networking through WiFi and Bluetooth. It is designed to be a self-contained, interconnectable mobile device that is also robust enough to survive in demanding environments.

The company expects that its smart glasses could be adopted for use cases ranging from aerospace engineering to medicine. The AR capability of the glasses would also be useful for workers in energy plants or other dangerous and noisy environments by identifying and signaling dangers. Or, for slightly less chaotic environments, the glasses could help with logistics and communications in a warehouse by providing streamlined workflow information and guidance for finding and moving packages.

The path forward

In October, Osterhout Design Group forged a partnership with VMware Inc. as part of the AirWatch mobility platform, joining with other smart glasses vendors, including APX Labs Inc., Atheer Inc., Intel Corp. and VUZIX Corp. The AirWatch platform makes it easier for organizations to use AR devices on their campuses and in work conditions through faster onboarding, network setup and app development tools.

Developers interested in producing third-party applications for ODG’s smartglasses can find information on the device’s operating system ReticleOS at the company’s developer portal. At the portal, the company has supplied documentation on the entire application programming interface suite, sample code, a knowledge base, community forums and coding resources.

ReticleOS is compatible with a number of third-party software development kits, including Augmenta, EON Reality, Vuforia and Wikitude.

The company has also reached out to businesses and developers as “collaboration partners.” Such partners would enjoy the benefits of direct support, early access to APIs and updated versions of the OS, submissions to the ODG app store and promotion of third-party SDKs.

Featured image credit: Osterhout Design Group