Trinity College Dublin spinout Volograms has secured the University Bridge Fund as an investor for its VR and AR hologram creation engine.

Volograms, an Ireland-based virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) technology spinout from Trinity College Dublin, emerged from stealth on Tuesday with €600,000 ($710,000) in seed funding led by the spinout-focused University Bridge Fund. University Bridge Fund is managed by growth equity fund Atlantic Bridge, with $68m on hand to back businesses from Ireland’s universities and third-level institutions. Volograms has developed technology that assembles a series of videos shot from different standpoints to compose volumetric holograms viewable on VR and AR platforms. The platform is compatible with multiple camera configurations including handheld consumer devices and can work both indoors and outdoors. Three PhD researchers from Trinity’s School of Computer Science and Statistics co-founded Volograms – Rafael Pagés, Jan Ondřej and Konstantinos Amplianitis. The team had previously worked together at V-Sense, a Trinity visual computing research group. Chris Horn, venture partner at Atlantic Bridge, will join the board of directors together with Paul Sweeney, vice-president and general manager of occupational AR technology developer Daqri. Daqri was not named as an investor in the round. Volograms previously received support from government-owned enterprise support agency Enterprise Ireland’s High Performance Start Up scheme, which backs businesses with an exportable idea and the potential to create 10 jobs and $1.2m in sales revenue within three or four years of their founding. Declan Weldon, head of commercial partnerships and tech transfer at Trinity, told Business World: “Volograms is a product of great teamwork and excellent science happening at the right time. “Add to that the University Bridge Fund and the High Performance Start Up support from Enterprise Ireland and you create the right ecosystem for this disruptive technology to take on a global challenge.”

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