The manga series "Dragon Ball" features a device called the "Scouter." Worn mainly by alien warriors, the device is a kind of combat-power meter. Shaped like a goggle worn over one ear and eye, it measures an opponent's abilities and displays the figures on the lens. The Scouter's premise—detecting combat power simply by looking at the opponent in front of you—has since been reproduced as parody and homage in countless other works.
There is a person who has held the dream of bringing this science-fiction device from the comics into reality for more than a decade. He is Choi Chi-won, founder and CEO of P&C Solution, an industrial augmented reality (AR) glasses company. Meeting with The Seoul Economic Daily at P&C Solution's headquarters in Seocho-gu, Seoul, on Wednesday, Choi smiled and said, "Reading the Dragon Ball comics in high school, I made up my mind that someday I would build a device like the Scouter," adding, "That dream led to today's P&C Solution." He explained, "I can't measure combat power like in the comics, but the Scouter and P&C Solution's smart glasses are similar in that both are sensor-based devices that aid human eyes and judgment."
Choi completed a doctoral program majoring in sensor technology at Korea University's Department of Electronic Engineering. He then joined the medical device company Vatech, where he was in charge of developing computed tomography (CT) sensors. To give concrete shape to his dream of a wearable display like the Scouter, he moved to the optics specialist Green Optics, where he also took part in developing head-up display (HUD) technology for the F-15K fighter jet. Having built up expertise across sensor, optics and display technologies, he founded P&C Solution in 2015, focusing on developing industrial AR glasses.
P&C Solution's flagship product is the "Metalens" series of industrial smart glasses. At the time the company was founded, interest in the smart glasses market was concentrated on consumer products. This was because global big tech firms were trying to seize the market by targeting individual consumers—Google first unveiled its "Google Glass" concept in 2011, and Microsoft introduced "HoloLens" in 2015. But Choi's judgment was different. He believed there was little chance of winning a head-on battle with big tech in the consumer market. "It's hard to create a competitive advantage with performance alone in consumer products," he said. "In the end it's a battle of brands and marketing, and it's not easy for a Korean venture company to beat global big tech."
Instead, Choi focused on the industrial market targeting public institutions and companies. "While consumer products follow a structure of mass-producing a small variety of items for consumers worldwide, industrial products require finely adjusting specifications to meet customers' requirements," he explained. "For this reason, large companies' willingness to enter is relatively low, and it is an area where venture companies with fast technological responsiveness can secure competitiveness."
P&C Solution launched its first-generation Metalens product in 2021 and won a CES Innovation Award in the United States in 2023 with that product. In 2023, it introduced its second-generation product, "Metalens2," continuing its push into the industrial smart glasses market. Choi describes the Metalens series as a "spatial computer." When Apple unveiled its mixed reality (MR) headset "Vision Pro" in 2023, it introduced it as "Apple's first spatial computer." Spatial computing refers to a three-dimensional interface that expands apps and information once confined within monitors or smartphone screens into the user's actual surrounding space, and is operated by eyes, hands and voice. "Metalens, too, lets you display and use various apps and information that were once used only inside a monitor in three-dimensional (3D) space," Choi said. "When you wear Metalens, you can use all the space around the user like a computer."
Domestic and overseas companies that have piloted or are using Metalens currently use it as an artificial intelligence (AI)-based remote collaboration tool at manufacturing and maintenance sites. When a field worker wears Metalens, they can communicate in real time with a manager or expert located far away while working. The ability to display work manuals, blueprints and inspection items on the lens, freeing up both hands, is also highly valued at industrial sites. In Korea, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, Hanwha and LIG D&A are using P&C Solution's Metalens, while overseas, the company has supplied products to Saudi Arabia's state-owned energy company Aramco and Singapore's defense firm ST Engineering. It is also discussing a proof of concept (PoC) with Boeing, the world's largest aircraft manufacturer, for the supply of Metalens.
Choi cited "customized responsiveness" as the reason major companies at home and abroad are seeking out Metalens. "Metalens2 basically comes with an AI voice recognition feature, but due to the product's specifications, voice command input was capped at about four words," he recalled. "One client requested a product for military operations that could recognize more than 20 words." He added, "At first, the recognition rate actually dropped because we tried to forcibly adjust the existing voice recognition feature, but we succeeded in massively upgrading the feature to meet the customer's requirements."
Currently, only about five companies worldwide, including P&C Solution, are known to develop and produce industrial smart glasses. Choi emphasized that competitiveness in the industrial smart glasses market comes not only from product completeness but from field experience. "Any company can quickly make a high-quality product itself, but the key know-how of the business is how many diverse customers you meet and how you find unexpected defects in the field," he said. "The difference in debugging capabilities to find and improve such problems will ultimately lead to gaps between companies."
With this strategy, the company plans to raise its annual revenue from about 11.9 billion won last year to 16 billion won this year. "Annual product sales were at the level of 200 to 300 units through last year, but from this year, full-fledged supply contracts will follow, making it possible to sell more than 1,000 units," Choi said with confidence.
The launch of a new product, "Metalens Air" (tentative name), is also imminent. The product maintains 95% of the performance of the existing Metalens2 while drastically cutting its weight from 620 grams to 115 grams. While the existing product had a main body containing computing components in the part that touches the back of the user's head, the new product moved this to the eyeglass frame side, lowering the weight to one-fifth of the previous level. Metalens Air is scheduled for official release within this year.
Choi is also seeking P&C Solution's next growth engine. The product he envisions is assistive smart glasses for people with disabilities. Representative examples include a product for the hearing impaired that analyzes surrounding noise and conversation through voice recognition and displays them as text on the lens, and a product for the visually impaired that recognizes the surrounding environment with a camera and conveys it by voice.
Choi expects that P&C Solution will someday rise to No. 1 in the world in the industrial smart glasses market. "When I talk with founders of electronics manufacturing companies, they jokingly say that 'getting KC certification in Korea is harder than getting Japanese certification,'" he said. "That shows just how world-class Korea's electronics quality control is." He stressed, "I will dominate the global market with both product performance and price competitiveness," adding, "Just as there are Apple lovers all over the world, I will create customers who love P&C Solution's products in the industrial smart glasses market as well."
