The Blood and Bone Behind Magic Leap
Rony Abovitz
Related Magic Leap: Founder of Secretive Start-Up Unveils Mixed-Reality Goggles Rony Abovitz talks with Glixel about the tech and ambitions behind new MR Goggles
 Rony Abovitz  seems at home in  his  office  a sizable cube made up of three glass walls and one constructed of an array of oddly-shaped shelving seemingly custom designed to hold  its  collection of models  toys  books and other pop culture jetsam. There are two others in the room with us  but after I ask  Abovitz  about  his  inspiration   he  drops into a monolog that lasts  with few interruptions  about an hour. In it   he  tells me a bit of  his  childhood   his  college days  the growth and sale of  his  first company and finally the technology that empowers everything they do at Magic Leap.
What started  Abovitz  down  his  unique path was a love of the creator - of the science fiction  authors and painters who would later have a tremendous impact on  his  life. Those creations   he  says  put an idea in your head  those ideas become dreams and those dreams inspire a strong desire to figure out how to turn them into reality. âAt least  for me â  he  says. âI think I grew up watching a lot of cartoons  a lot of science fiction  also reading a lot of great novels from Elie Wiesel and all kinds of people.â
âI think a lot of people who want to do those things  they write books; they do art  they write music â  he  says. âThat's where you can do everything you want  you can imagine  it  and  it  can happen over there. But I was like  âWhat if that stuff could happen in the world?ââ
That early love of science fiction and of things that may one day possibly be is what likely drove  Abovitz  to study biomedical engineering in college. After working on his Masters  a project that involved the creation of shape-memory aortic implants   Abovitz â interested shifted to orthopedic surgery and neurosurgery.
âI was imagining this very high-tech thing going on  where there are people in space suits and like infrared stuff. You just wave something over and you automatically have this miniaturized healing process with tiny little droids â  he  says. âBut it was the opposite of that; it was like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I literally had blood and bone sprayed all over me. I was in a hip surgery and it was just horrifying.
So he and a team of like-minded friends and colleagues set about building an operating system for the operating room and a robotic arm to help improve surgeries. That first company later became Mako Surgical Corp. While the introduction of robotic arms into orthopedic surgery was a breakthrough  it brought along with it a number of other key inventions and gave  Abovitz   his  first taste of being bringing science fiction into the real world.
Related Magic Leap: Founder of Secretive Start-Up Unveils Mixed-Reality Goggles Rony Abovitz talks with Glixel about the tech and ambitions behind new MR Goggles
 Rony Abovitz  seems at home in  his  office  a sizable cube made up of three glass walls and one constructed of an array of oddly-shaped shelving seemingly custom designed to hold  its  collection of models  toys  books and other pop culture jetsam. There are two others in the room with us  but after I ask  Abovitz  about  his  inspiration   he  drops into a monolog that lasts  with few interruptions  about an hour. In it   he  tells me a bit of  his  childhood   his  college days  the growth and sale of  his  first company and finally the technology that empowers everything they do at Magic Leap.
What started  Abovitz  down  his  unique path was a love of the creator - of the science fiction  authors and painters who would later have a tremendous impact on  his  life. Those creations   he  says  put an idea in your head  those ideas become dreams and those dreams inspire a strong desire to figure out how to turn them into reality. âAt least  for me â  he  says. âI think I grew up watching a lot of cartoons  a lot of science fiction  also reading a lot of great novels from Elie Wiesel and all kinds of people.â
âI think a lot of people who want to do those things  they write books; they do art  they write music â  he  says. âThat's where you can do everything you want  you can imagine   [TGT]   and   [TGT]   can happen over there. But I was like  âWhat if that stuff could happen in the world?ââ
That early love of science fiction and of things that may one day possibly be is what likely drove  Abovitz  to study biomedical engineering in college. After working on his Masters  a project that involved the creation of shape-memory aortic implants   Abovitz â interested shifted to orthopedic surgery and neurosurgery.
âI was imagining this very high-tech thing going on  where there are people in space suits and like infrared stuff. You just wave something over and you automatically have this miniaturized healing process with tiny little droids â  he  says. âBut it was the opposite of that; it was like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I literally had blood and bone sprayed all over me. I was in a hip surgery and it was just horrifying.
So he and a team of like-minded friends and colleagues set about building an operating system for the operating room and a robotic arm to help improve surgeries. That first company later became Mako Surgical Corp. While the introduction of robotic arms into orthopedic surgery was a breakthrough  it brought along with it a number of other key inventions and gave  Abovitz   his  first taste of being bringing science fiction into the real world.