Meta’s head of AR hardware on the future of AR

While VR headsets have been with us for at least a decade, AR hardware barely exists today; indeed, the very components that will comprise the hardware scarcely exist, making it a truly zero-to-one innovation challenge. Meta’s Head of AR Glasses Hardware, Caitlin Kalinowski is helping to lead that charge. Kalinowski hails from Portsmouth, NH and studied mechanical […]

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Meta EngineeringMeta Engineering

·February 24, 2023·Virtual Reality

Meta’s head of AR hardware on the future of AR

Meta’s AR Hardware Chief on Building What Doesn’t Exist Yet

While VR headsets have been on the market for years, AR hardware is still in its infancy—so much so that the core components required to build it haven’t been invented. That makes the field a genuine zero-to-one engineering problem, according to Caitlin Kalinowski, Meta’s Head of AR Glasses Hardware.

Kalinowski, a mechanical engineering graduate from Stanford and a Portsmouth, NH native, previously led product design and integration for the Meta Quest. In a recent conversation with Tech@, she discussed how AR hardware must be smaller, lighter, and deliver comparable power to the VR headsets she helped build earlier in her career—a drastically different set of constraints.

She also highlighted the importance of diversity across skills, backgrounds, and perspectives for innovation, and stressed the value of collaboration and creating a safe space for failure when navigating the massive gap between zero and one.