The explorer
Herbert Bay has done what others only dream of: the ETH alumnus sailed a yacht halfway round the world with his family. Now, he is immersing himself in foreign worlds on a professional basis – at Magic Leap, a company specialising in augmented reality.
In his personal life, Herbert Bay has both feet firmly on the ground – but at work, he mixes the real world with the virtual. The 44-year-old is Principal Software Engineer, Digital Health & User Perception at the Zurich office of Magic Leap. The US company specialises in “mixed-reality” applications, in which 3D images are superimposed on real space.
Together with health insurer CSS, Magic Leap recently demonstrated the prototype of a virtual physiotherapist. Projected into the user’s living room using 3D glasses, the virtual figure guides them through their physical exercises. Further applications are in the development phase. “I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of virtual teleporting,” says Bay. His vague notions of what it might involve really took shape when he saw Star Wars at the cinema as a 12-year-old.
Bay joined Magic Leap just a few months ago. Prior to that, he had a different passion: he spent four years sailing the high seas in a 12-metre yacht – together with his wife and two sons, who are now six and eight years old. Their journey took them across the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Pacific to faraway New Zealand. They often spent weeks, sometimes months, in one spot.
A yen for travel and adventure is in Bay’s blood: his grandfather was a mechanic who went overseas to assemble machinery; his mother spent several years of her childhood on the Caribbean island of Curaçao. Even as a boy, Bay spent hours studying nautical charts while dreaming of travel. Growing up in Kreuzlingen on Lake Constance, he learned to sail and windsurf.
After secondary school, he followed in his grandfather’s footsteps and completed an apprenticeship as a machine mechanic: “Like him, I wanted to explore the world.” Having completed his military service, Bay packed up his surfboard and headed to the United States. He moved around a lot, worked nights as a bouncer and went windsurfing during the day; he lived life to the full and enjoyed every minute of it.
Fateful encounter
But he soon felt the need to learn more. After seven months in the US, he returned to Switzerland, gaining entrance to study mechanical engineering at Konstanz University of Applied Sciences. But then he had another idea: why not become a diplomat? The profession would enable him to see the world and learn all sorts of new things. “The travel bug had bitten me again,” says Bay with a laugh. The fastest way to reach his goal was to study at university, so the then 21-year-old made a beeline for EPF Lausanne to get the qualifications he needed and to brush up his French. He completed a one-year preparatory course for the entrance examination, an option also open to foreigners who do not have a recognised qualification to study at a Swiss university. It was a decision that was to change his life. One of his fellow students on the course was a Tunisian woman called Asma – and she would later become his wife.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of teleporting.”Herbert Bay
The two became inseparable. They began studying microengineering at EPF Lausanne and later spent an exchange semester together in Montreal, Canada. After they had both graduated with honours, Asma found a position as a doctoral student at IBM Research in Rüschlikon. Bay also looked for a job close by and, coincidentally, landed one at IBM as well – but in the e-learning unit of the company’s commercial arm. However, he soon grew frustrated with the work there. The idea of virtual teleportation that had inspired him since childhood resurfaced in his mind once again. To get a step closer to this goal, he began working on a thesis at ETH Zurich’s Computer Vision Lab.
In his thesis, he developed a new, faster process for creating 3D reconstructions of a scene using only two images. The algorithm he developed, which is also suitable for image recognition and video stabilisation, is in widespread use today, for instance in smartphones.
Back then, in 2006, mobile phones were still a relatively new phenomenon, as was virtual reality. “The algorithm came at exactly the right time,” says Bay. Together with his fellow doctoral student Till Quack and ETH professor Luc van Gool, Bay founded the spin-off kooaba, the purpose of which was to develop applications for image recognition on mobile phones. The trio made the company a success: in 2014, kooaba was acquired by chip manufacturer Qualcomm and integ- rated in its subsidiary Vuforia, which specialises in mixed-reality applications for mobile devices.
Hitting rock bottom
With the sale of kooaba in the offing, Bay felt the time had finally come to set off on his long-awaited sailing trip. He and his wife had been looking for a yacht and came across one in the south of France; both of them had also obtained their boat licences. They already knew from holiday sailing trips that it was feasible to sail with two small children aboard. But then something shocking happened: in August 2013, one day after they had signed the contract for their new yacht, Asma suffered a stroke. Although she recovered relatively quickly, she initially said she could no longer face the idea of a sailing trip.
“We hit rock bottom at Christmas,” says Bay. The sale of kooaba was getting closer, but not yet done and dusted. “I’d invested everything I had in the company.” He had only 50 francs left in his account, and the family’s monthly income was immediately eaten up by rent, food and childcare fees. That’s when Asma made the decision that they should set sail after all. She had suffered a stroke in the supposed safety of her own home, so what could possibly happen to her out at sea that would be worse than that?
In paradise
They weighed anchor in June 2014. In the Caribbean, and later in French Polynesia, they felt like they were in paradise: swimming, diving, wending their way in their dinghy through coral reefs to get to land, making new friends and, again and again, discovering unknown islands and stretches of coastline. The boys, in particular, enjoyed their life at sea: “We could hardly coax them off the boat.” In an effort to stay creative and at the top of his game in terms of technology, Bay developed apps while on the trip and, from the helm of his yacht, managed Shortcut Media, another start-up he had set up before the sale of kooaba.
The journey was not without its ups and downs: once they sought refuge in a bay from an approaching storm, but the wind turned and unleashed its full force on their boat. Luckily, their anchor held.
After four years of travel – the Bays had reached New Zealand in the meantime – they knew they had to make a decision: should they keep going or bring their journey to an end? With time, life on board had become rather strenuous, and New Zealand was a long way from family and friends. The country also offered very little in the way of professional opportunities: “I was itching for a new challenge in the tech sector and for a chance to make a difference.” With heavy hearts, the family decided to sell their yacht and return to Switzerland.
Although it has taken some getting used to, Bay likes putting down roots again. “Perhaps my inner rebel is a bit tamer now,” he says. What’s more, after the simple lifestyle at sea, he appreciates the luxury of being able to go to a supermarket and buy anything he wants. For the time being, he says, things are fine just the way they are. But what if the travel bug bites again sometime in the future? The question elicits a wry smile: “We’ll see.”