Project Glass

Project Glass is a research and development program by Google to prototype and build an augmented reality head-mounted display (or HMD).^[1] Though such displays for augmented reality are not a new idea, the project has drawn media attention^[2] primarily due to its backing by the major public corporation, as well as the prototype, which is smaller and slimmer than the previous designs for head-mounted displays.^[3] The first Project Glass demo resembles a pair of normal eyeglasses where the lens is replaced by a heads-up display.^[4] In the future, new designs may allow integration of the display into people's normal eyewear.^[5][6]

Project Glass is part of the Google X Lab at the company,^[7] which has worked on other futuristic technologies, such as a self-driving car. The project was announced on Google+ by Babak Parviz, an electrical engineer who has also worked on putting displays into contact lenses; Steve Lee, a project manager and "geolocation specialist"; and Sebastian Thrun, who developed Udacity as well as working on the self-driving car project.^[8]

The product began testing in April 2012.^[9] The New York Times reported that the glasses would be available to the public for "around the cost of current smartphones" – $250 to $600 – by the end of 2012,^[10] but other reports have stated that the glasses are not expected to be available for purchase soon.^[11] On April 9, 2012, Will Powell released a video of a system similar to Project Glass, using Dragon Naturally Speaking for voice recognition, Vuzix head mounted display glasses and written in Adobe Air.^[12][13]

The intended purpose of Project Glass products would be the hands free displaying of information currently available to most smartphone users,^[14] and allowing for interaction with the Internet via natural language voice commands,^[15] in a manner similar to the iPhone application Siri.^[16] The software powering the glasses will be Google's Android operating system.^[6]

Sergey Brin wore a prototype set of glasses to an April 5, 2012 Foundation Fighting Blindness event in San Francisco.^[17][18] Despite the generally positive reception for the prototype, there have been been numerous parodies and criticisms aimed at the general notion of augmented reality glasses, ranging from the potential for Google to insert advertising (its main source of revenue) to more dystopian outcomes.^[19][20]

See also

• EyeTap
• Google Goggles — augmented reality app
• Laster Technologies — augmented reality devices manufacturer

References

External links

• Project Glass on Google+