Iristick

Iristick
Information
Type	Private
Industry	Augmented Reality, smart glasses
Founded	2016
Founder	Steven Serneels, Riemer Grootjans
Headquarters	Antwerp, Belgium
Notable Personnel	Riemer Grootjans (co-founder, CTO)
Products	Industrial smart glasses (Z1, C1, G2, G2 PRO, G3, H1)
Website	https://iristick.com

Iristick is a Belgian company that designs industrial Smart glasses for enterprise and healthcare use. Headquartered in Antwerp, with a United States office in New York, the company makes rugged, certified safety glasses that connect to a smartphone and are aimed at frontline workers rather than consumers. Iristick positions its products around three uses: remote assistance (so an off-site expert can see what the wearer sees), digital work instructions, and pick-by-vision logistics.

Unlike standalone headsets, Iristick glasses do their heavy processing on a connected phone. The glasses carry cameras with an optical zoom lens, a barcode scanner, a small heads-up display, microphones, and speakers, while the smartphone supplies compute and battery. The company argues this keeps the eyewear light and lowers the amount of radiating electronics near the wearer's head.

History

Iristick was founded in the mid-2010s by Steven Serneels and Riemer Grootjans, with Grootjans serving as chief technology officer. Several press accounts, including a 2020 release from display maker Kopin, date the founding to 2016, though some company and aggregator records cite 2014 or 2015. The company set out to build smart glasses specifically for industrial and professional environments rather than the broader consumer market that early products like Google Glass had targeted.

Its first glasses, the Iristick.Z1 and the lighter Iristick.C1, were developed with the Belgian design studio Achilles Design and eyewear designer Philip Hoet, and were prototyped and produced using 3D printing in partnership with Materialise. The pair won a Red Dot Design Award in 2018. The development effort was supported by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 program.

In 2020, Iristick worked with Kopin to integrate that firm's White Pearl optical module into the glasses, a partnership the companies highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic when travel restrictions pushed industrial firms toward remote, "you-see-what-I-see" support. The company expanded its lineup over the following years with the G-series (worn like glasses) and the head-mounted H-series.

In February 2023, Iristick announced a 4 million euro capital increase led by the Belgian investment firm Saffelberg Investments, alongside a consortium of existing and new shareholders. The money was earmarked for platform development and for sales and marketing in Europe and the United States, and Karel Goderis was brought in to lead the expansion. At the time the company said more than 700 companies used its products, citing customers such as Bayer, Siemens Energy, JBT, and Houston Methodist Hospital.

Technology

Iristick glasses are tethered, smartphone-powered devices. Earlier models such as the Z1 and the G2 PRO connect to a small pocket unit by a thin coaxial cable, and the pocket unit in turn connects to an Android or iOS phone; the newest G3 connects directly to a phone over USB-C and draws power from it, with no battery of its own.

The central feature across the range is a dual-camera system with a powerful optical zoom. A 16-megapixel central camera handles general capture, while a second zoom camera lets a remote viewer read fine detail or scan barcodes from a distance; Iristick has said the Z1's zoom could read a barcode from two meters away. The glasses are operated hands-free through voice commands and a touchpad, and they include a small monocular heads-up display positioned over one eye.

For the display, the original glasses used a Kopin White Pearl transmissive LCD module at WQVGA resolution (about 428 by 240 pixels) with a curved prism optic, chosen for sunlight readability at low power. The later G3 and H1 use a brighter OLED panel at 640 by 400 pixels rated up to 2000 nits, and the G3 lets the wearer choose the left or right eye for the display. The hardware is built to industrial standards with ANSI Z87 and European safety-eyewear certification (EN166 on the G2 PRO, EN 16321 on the G3). Ingress protection varies by model: the helmet-mounted H1 is rated IP67 for dust and water resistance, while the USB-C G3 is rated IP54.

Products

Iristick's catalog has moved from the first-generation Z1 and C1 to the current G-series and H-series. The G-series is styled like a pair of safety glasses, while the H-series is a head-mounted unit that clips to a helmet or other personal protective equipment.

Product	Year	Type	Notable specs and notes
Iristick.Z1	2018 (Red Dot)	Tethered industrial smart glasses	First-generation model; dual cameras with optical zoom; barcode scanning at up to ~2 m; Kopin White Pearl WQVGA LCD; Red Dot Design Award 2018
Iristick.C1	2018 (Red Dot)	Tethered industrial smart glasses	Lighter ~62 g variant; 9-axis motion sensor; 3-axis adjustable heads-up display in the right lens; shared the 2018 Red Dot Award with the Z1
Iristick.G2 PRO	2021	Tethered safety smart glasses	LCD 426x240, right-eye; two cameras (16 MP plus 5 MP with 6x optical zoom and digital zoom); ~78 g; hot-swappable 13.3 Wh battery, ~5 h runtime, ~90 min charge; EN166 / ANSI Z87
Iristick.H1	2021	Head-mounted smart glasses	Announced April 27, 2021; dual 16 MP central cameras with optical zoom; 3-axis adjustable display; clips to PPE; OLED 640x400 up to 2000 nits; IP67; basis for the intrinsically safe ECOM Visor-EXR 01
Iristick.G3	2020s	USB-C safety smart glasses	Direct USB-C connection to the phone, no onboard battery; OLED 640x400 up to 2000 nits, left- or right-eye selectable; 16 MP camera with 3x optical and 10x digital zoom; on-device image processing

Reception and market position

Iristick competes in the enterprise and industrial smart glasses segment alongside companies such as Vuzix and RealWear, a market sometimes grouped under Enterprise AR. Coverage has generally framed the glasses as a niche but credible tool for industrial augmented reality, praising the rugged, certified design and the strong optical zoom for remote inspection and logistics, while noting that the devices depend on a connected smartphone and serve professional buyers rather than consumers. The 2018 Red Dot Award and the Horizon 2020 backing are frequently cited as markers of the company's design and engineering credibility.