Augmented reality wearables will change how we experience our surroundings and interact with people and objects.
At Facebook Connect 2020, AR smart glasses and augmented reality glasses were announced to be in works.
Project ARIA, a research device to further the innovation and development of AR wearables was announced.
At 2020 edition of Facebook Connect, we saw Facebook revealed plans about bringing their smart glasses and augmented reality wearables in the market. The two devices have been in works. While smart glasses will lay foundational work in augmented reality domain for Facebook, augmented reality glasses which will follow it will be highly researched and functional.
Facebook reality lab’s initiatives in augmented reality can be understood in the following steps, smart glasses, project Aria for research and development of AR glasses and then finally AR glasses.
To bring the best combination of technology and style, Facebook will be teaming up with EssilorLuxottica for the ergonomic design of the smart glasses. EssilorLuxottica are makers of brands like Ray-ban and Facebook gave a big tease at the event about it. So, it will be safe to assume that the smart glasses will be somewhat like your regular Ray-bans in look and feel but ten or thousand times more efficient. Some of the use cases of the said smart glasses can be to interact with objects around you, interact with holograms of your friends from far away, get real time direction navigations, share what you like in front of your eyes with ease.
Project Aria is a research device, more like a smart glass that will help them understand and build softwares like live maps and hardware for their augmented reality glasses. While introducing project Aria, Facebook has made clear its intentions about data privacy and privacy of the people or objects of its research. To give a very basic example, blurring of faces of people and license plate numbers.
Though Facebook accepts that a lot of foundational work is required to be done to come up with reliable and technologically efficient AR glasses, it has announced it’s intentions and has started the research into building one. A lot needs to be understood about how users will interact with the augmented objetcs, what input is required to be given to the AR glasses, what will be the output in terms of reaction or engagement from the user, what kind of audio inputs will be required, how will they be able to reduce the ambient noise, how will haptics form a part of the entire ecosystem etc..
Smooth engagement and experience with the augmented reality are at the centre of a successful augmented reality product and we have high hopes from Facebook!