Robert Rice is an Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and XR Cloud pioneer and expert. He is an experienced startup founder and executive, speaker, adviser, consultant, and industry evangelist with 25+ years of experience.

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Robert is a passionate innovator and evangelist for advancing the state-of-the-art of interactive and immersive media. He is currently focusing on the fundamental technologies for the convergence of AR and VR, spatial intelligence, social commerce, AI-driven avatars and intelligent agents, virtual goods, the Internet of Things, and geolocal contextual media. This is the XR cloud.

Robert coined the term XR in 2014 as an umbrella term for AR, MR, and VR as a whole, or the seamless combination of each together.

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Robert is the author of MMO Evolution, a contributing author in Working Through Synthetic Worlds (Augmented Reality Tools for Enhanced Forensics Simulations and Crime Scene Analysis), and the creator of Social Kinematics.

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Recognized as an Internet Gaming Pioneer by Advertising Age magazine in 1996, Robert was also called a Founding Father of the Digital Nation in 1998 by The Raleigh News & Observer. He is an authority on mobile augmented reality, persistent immersive environments, virtual reality and worlds, massively multi-user online games, and simulations.

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Robert worked on some of the first multiplayer virtual reality arcade games in the early 90s, starting with the conversion of Wolfenstein 3D into multi-player Wolfenstein VR (arcade) and was an early pioneer in designing real-time 3D MMORPGs.