Mixed Reality Is Revolutionizing Robotics Sales and Design

Author

Lori-Lee Elliott
October 20, 2025

But First…Cool, if Real

A battlefield digital twin:

Scroll to the end of this newsletter to see.

Becoming Dauntless

On this week’s Dauntless podcast, Ben James, CEO and co-founder of Tubular Network, shared how his robotics startup used mixed reality (MR) to outpace competitors in the hyperlogistics industry. Here’s why every entrepreneur, business owner, IT consultant, and executive should pay attention:

  • Traditional sales cycles for robotics and industrial automation are lengthy and expensive.

  • Prospects struggle to understand how a new system fits in with their existing facility or site.

  • High-cost pilots (often exceeding tens of thousands of dollars) become gatekeepers to adoption.

Tubular Network’s core offering is an underground tube network in which autonomous shuttles carry payloads. Rather than shipping prototypes or relying on renderings, the Tubular team used mixed reality experiences with one or more of the following:

  1. Scans real warehouses or hangars with mobile LiDAR or photogrammetry to plan demos or installations.

  2. Imports 3D renders or models into a mixed or virtual reality environment.

  3. A lightly guided mixed reality demo that simulates product placement, workflow, and throughput, before a single physical tube is installed.

The result? An accelerated sales cycle with a $400 headset, rather than a $50,000 pilot, that lives rent-free in prospective clients' brains for months.

Going beyond sales, we also cover:

  • Mixed Reality for Technician Training & Repairs

  • The Future of Digital Twins

  • Spatial Computing for Complex Data Visualization

  • Design Validation in a Mixed Reality Medium

  • Why No One Talks About the Spatial Computing Wins

Want to see mixed reality in action and gather more insider tips on embedding it into your sales, design, and operations?

👉 Watch the full interview with Ben James and discover why mixed reality is poised to become the “killer app”.

Tech News to Make You Smarter

  • There’s a quantum AI Data Center in New York City. (SlashGear). Oxford Quantum Circuits (OQC) set up a quantum computing system at a data center in Manhattan. The goal is to entice Wall Street banks to experiment with quantum computing for financial applications, like fraud prevention, derivatives pricing, and portfolio optimization. OQC developed the project with Nvidia and uses Nvidia's GH200 Grace Hopper high-performance computing (HPC) chip. It makes sense to target financial institutions as they have a lot to gain ($$$) from and a lot to lose as quantum computing makes our current password protection cryptography systems obsolete.

  • Apple Announced the Vision Pro 2 (XR Today). A fancier chip (the M5), a better head strap, and a performance boost were the main announcements/rumors attached the the Vision Pro 2, expected to launch late 2025/early 2026. It’s unlikely these updates will be enough to see mass adoption numbers. Instead, Apple split the product line and spun off a Vision Air, which will be more like the Meta Ray-Bans. No updates on the Vision Air, which isn’t slated to debut until 2027.

  • What Spatial Mapping Can Do For Retail. (AR Insider). You’re probably familiar with the consumer-facing use cases for augmented reality, like virtual try-ons or “see in your space” experiences, even if you don’t think of them as XR. But what about the business facing AR tools? Retail is often an early adopter of tech, but it has such a high ROI for them if it works. Retailers are now using digital twins of store interiors to help optimize spaces for foot traffic, optimize for product placement, and solve the dreaded phantom inventory problem (ie if you go to buy an available item online and it turns out there’s none left). If retail tech piques your interest, make sure you are subscribed so you get notified about our next podcast episode.

Saved on Socials

The posts, memes, job postings, and videos that caught my attention this week:

Recently Played >

What we listened to this week

Overheard on Slack

Enter the chat. What our devs are talking about…

  • “I didn’t get an auto responder from that inbox, so hopefully there’s a human there to help us.” - Life and times during a government shutdown.

Like this newsletter? Make sure you’re subscribed to get it fresh to your inbox.

📸 This is a screenshot from Anduril’s EagleEye 3D sand table, seen with their mixed reality headset. It’s unclear if this exact product is real yet, but others like it exist. We even built one at Dauntless XR (it’s called Aura and is primarily used for air and space).