Michael Andrew Email & Phone Number

Auckland, Nz

Auckland, New Zealand

At StretchSense I lead the integrations team, connecting our industry-leading Studio gloves into various platforms and software, enabling our customers to bring characters to life for motion capture and live performance. Developers can use our SDKs to build immersive content and embody their characters with high fidelity live finger animation while handling props or interacting with real or virtual objects.My team develops our Unreal and Unity plugins suitable for integrating… Show more At StretchSense I lead the integrations team, connecting our industry-leading Studio gloves into various platforms and software, enabling our customers to bring characters to life for motion capture and live performance. Developers can use our SDKs to build immersive content and embody their characters with high fidelity live finger animation while handling props or interacting with real or virtual objects.My team develops our Unreal and Unity plugins suitable for integrating StretchSense Studio gloves with:- Virtual reality training- Augmented reality- vTubers / live streaming- Indie motion captureRecent projects include:- StretchSense Studio Plugin for Unity- StretchSense Studio Plugin for Unreal Engine- OptiTrack Motive 3.0 Plugin- Live XR demo content for Augmented World Expo 2023 demonstrating virtual object handling- Live XR demo content for SIGGRAPH 2023- Technical demonstrations for motion capture hardware integrations Show less

Auckland, New Zealand

My experience in VR spans 10 years, since the advent of the Oculus Rift DK1. Since these headsets were first available to the public in the form of early development kits, I've experimented and developed on most of the popular headsets including Microsoft HoloLens, Meta Quest and HTC's Vive. I'm ecstatic about the possibilities that the latest hardware can bring, like full body and hand tracking, face and eye capture and room scale passthrough AR, allowing users to walk around their entire… Show more My experience in VR spans 10 years, since the advent of the Oculus Rift DK1. Since these headsets were first available to the public in the form of early development kits, I've experimented and developed on most of the popular headsets including Microsoft HoloLens, Meta Quest and HTC's Vive. I'm ecstatic about the possibilities that the latest hardware can bring, like full body and hand tracking, face and eye capture and room scale passthrough AR, allowing users to walk around their entire houses and interact with virtual objects and characters.I firmly believe that coupled with recent advances in generative AI and computer vision, we are seeing the birth of the next-generation computing system that will eventually replace modern smartphones, tablets and portable PCs and have been tapping into this field across various startups to influence how the industry collectively builds the computers and software applications of tomorrow.My primary focus is XR development on the Meta Quest 3, bringing virtual characters to life in the real world to act as virtual assistants in the next generation of spatial computing. The Meta Quest platform brings a balance of cutting edge technology at an accessible price point, built on years of innovation from industry leading experts in hardware and software design and they consistently deliver outstanding features that stand out from their competitors, making it a great platform to work with.VR Development• Meta Quest 2,3, Pro / Vive Pro / Valve Index• Unity Editor• Meta Movement SDK for Unity• Meta Interaction SDK• Unity XR Interaction Framework• Unity AR Foundation• Microsoft MRTK (Unreal & Unity)Generative AI• Large Language Models (Meta's LLama2)• Python• Automatic Speech Recognition• Text-to-speech• Stable Diffusion 1.5 / Stable Diffusion XL 1.0 Show less

Auckland, New Zealand

At Consegna I developed AI powered digital human assistants running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) that integrated with Amazon Connect to enhance customer service for healthcare, finance and telecommunications. Some of these were powered by UneeQ's digital human platform.Key Projects- Financial customer onboarding AI assistant- Healthcare assistant for training patients to self-administer a pharmaceutical product- AI assistants for a telecommunications provider's call… Show more At Consegna I developed AI powered digital human assistants running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) that integrated with Amazon Connect to enhance customer service for healthcare, finance and telecommunications. Some of these were powered by UneeQ's digital human platform.Key Projects- Financial customer onboarding AI assistant- Healthcare assistant for training patients to self-administer a pharmaceutical product- AI assistants for a telecommunications provider's call center- AI quiz host for a marketing campaign Show less

Auckland, New Zealand

At UneeQ, I was the Tech Lead on various customer projects for UneeQ's digital human platform and also developed pre-sales demos showcasing key features of our SDK. Digital humans are AI-powered customer experience ambassadors that recreate human interactions at infinite scale. This allowed some of the world’s biggest brands and most innovative enterprises to put a human touch back into business, consumer retail brands and healthcare.I led the scoping, technical planning and… Show more At UneeQ, I was the Tech Lead on various customer projects for UneeQ's digital human platform and also developed pre-sales demos showcasing key features of our SDK. Digital humans are AI-powered customer experience ambassadors that recreate human interactions at infinite scale. This allowed some of the world’s biggest brands and most innovative enterprises to put a human touch back into business, consumer retail brands and healthcare.I led the scoping, technical planning and implementation of many projects as part of our Professional Services department, and was involved in pre-sales and technical onboarding of our platform for new customers.Key Projects- An AI powered digital human companion based on the officially licenced likeness of Albert Einstein that could interface with Wolfram Alpha and other third party APIs to provide engaging conversation and historical information about Einstein's life.- A healthcare AI assistant digital human that could provide advice and information from official CDC sources, powered by IBM Watson cloud services.- A self-service kiosk based digital human assistant that could help SingTel customers top up their phone and order products from the unmanned shop. It also had functionality to escalate to a live customer services representative if shoppers had questions the AI assistant couldn't answer. The bulk of this project was scoping and customer enablement for SingTel's internal team to train them how to use our platform and provide guidance on the best UX and structure possible for the cloud services powering the digital human.- AI digital human concierge based in Melbourne that was embedded into an apartment building to take parcel deliveries. This was a multi-month project which involved prototyping and procuring hardware, leading our team to develop a custom frontend application and working with third party partners to develop the backend "brain" to interface with the building's security and door control system. Show less

Auckland, New Zealand

During my time at Lightspeed Graphics I worked on a browser-based photorealistic 3D rendering application, powered by cloud technology and WebGL and delivered features including:• 3D Animation Timeline Editor• Shader Improvements• Prototyping 360 Degree Rendering For VR, compatible with Oculus Go headsets• Realtime 3D Furniture Visualization• User Account ManagementI also worked with the following technologies:• Typescript• Angular7• Ember.js•… Show more During my time at Lightspeed Graphics I worked on a browser-based photorealistic 3D rendering application, powered by cloud technology and WebGL and delivered features including:• 3D Animation Timeline Editor• Shader Improvements• Prototyping 360 Degree Rendering For VR, compatible with Oculus Go headsets• Realtime 3D Furniture Visualization• User Account ManagementI also worked with the following technologies:• Typescript• Angular7• Ember.js• WebGL / THREE.js / Babylon.js• Responsive Web App Development• Blender• Prototyping Show less

Auckland, New Zealand

Gladeye is an award-winning digital agency and has always prided itself in being on the forefront of storytelling through the innovative use of cutting-edge technology.During my time at Gladeye I primarily worked in a senior / lead capacity on various projects across pharmaceutical sales applications, brand campaigns and games as well as mobile apps that integrated with hardware. I also provided mentorship for the more junior members of the team and was involved in hiring a number of… Show more Gladeye is an award-winning digital agency and has always prided itself in being on the forefront of storytelling through the innovative use of cutting-edge technology.During my time at Gladeye I primarily worked in a senior / lead capacity on various projects across pharmaceutical sales applications, brand campaigns and games as well as mobile apps that integrated with hardware. I also provided mentorship for the more junior members of the team and was involved in hiring a number of exceptional contributors.I also lead our endeavours to establish the company's initial explorations into VR as it was finally released to the public with the Oculus Rift CV1 and first version of the HTC Vive. I organised and evangelised for these platforms both internally and to customers through demo days, hackathons and showcases. I helped scope and pitch several 3D and VR projects to customers in the museum, aviation and medical industries during this time, as well as innovated in the construction of bespoke hardware to scan people's likeness into VR as an interactive character.Full-stack web development• JavaScript for desktop, mobile & server (Node.js)• Angular• React• WebGL / THREE.js• Responsive websites• Mobile application development• Web application development in PHP / MySQL• Development for high traffic / large user bases • Developing hardware to interface with mobile• Prototyping• Client FacingTesting / QA• Automated Unit / Functional / End-to-end Testing• Release Management• Security auditing• Writing manual functional testing scripts for QA staffDevOps / Sys Admin• Systems Architecture design for AWS & VPS• Server Maintenance on Linux based systems• Setup & maintain LAMP / LNMP Stacks Show less

Auckland, New Zealand

I built all things digital at Market United - from EDMs, Micro-sites, e-commerce websites, Wordpress builds and Flash games.• JavaScript / jQuery• PHP / MySQL• HTML/CSS Website Development• Flash Development• Wordpress• Client Facing

Auckland, New Zealand

I primarily worked on Adobe Flash projects at Pitch during the peak of ActionScript 3.0 and Flex application development and worked on a number of 3D kiosk installations for retail stores using the technology. Later on, I pivoted to interactive JavaScript applications.• JavaScript / jQuery• PHP / MySQL• HTML/CSS Website Development• Flash Development• 3D Interactive Kiosks• Wordpress