Our Story

One problem. Fourteen years. Proven in the field.

It started with a question: can multiple people share the same mixed reality experience in the same physical space, in real time, on consumer devices?

2012 / The Blockhouse

Problem Emerges

Five untethered iPad users. A dozen autonomous digital characters. The first public, multi-user, interactive mixed reality experience on consumer mobile devices. AWE built the sensor fusion and coordinate system that made it work. Patent filed 2013. Granted 2018.

That prototype revealed the problem AWE has been solving ever since: how to establish and maintain a shared spatial state across multiple independent agents in a dynamic physical environment.

2014–2017 / Fort York

Scaling the Frame

Same problem. Nine acres. 100,000+ visitors per year. The TimeWarp VR Experience at Fort York tracked visitor positions across a complex outdoor environment, delivering location-specific immersive worlds through consumer smartphones. NPS 9.3. The problem didn’t go away at scale. It became more demanding.

2016–2018 / Virtual Director

Adding intent

Working with Rubber Match Productions, AWE built a system that tracked spatial relationships between people and used them to sequence cinematic decisions in real time. Film sets scanned. Actors tracked in motion. The 180-degree rule enforced mathematically. Patent granted. The system moved from tracking position to understanding interaction.

2020 — PRESENT

Breakthroughs

Collaborating with Geogram in complex production environments, the problem shifted from navigating shared space to maintaining it as a persistent, evolving system. AWE developed core capabilities: lightweight object localization, multi-sensor fusion, 2D-to-3D spatial mapping from standard cameras, and a spatial record that remains continuous as environments change. These systems were validated in uncontrolled environments—public streets, variable lighting, no infrastructure, consumer-grade sensors. The factory floor is the easier problem.

Physical AI

The Vision

What AWE has been solving for over a decade is now becoming a requirement.

Multi-agent coordination, large-scale localization, intent-aware spatial tracking, and persistent spatial records are no longer isolated problems—they are constraints on scaling automation.

Autonomous systems need a shared, continuously updated spatial reference that every agent can act on with confidence. AWE’s Spatial System of Record is that infrastructure.

AWE was founded by Srinivas Krishna in 2012.