Facebook working on a true AR glasses: "Smart glasses" branded Ray Ban!
Facebook will be releasing its first pair of consumer “smart glasses” next year as a branded Ray-Ban product, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced during the opening keynote of its all-virtual Facebook Connect conference. The company also unveiled the next-gen Quest 2 wireless VR headset during the event.
The company has talked for years about its plans to build AR devices that resemble a standard pair of glasses, and the company is now working with Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica to design the frames of its first consumer smart glasses, confirming rumors last fall that the company had partnered with the Italian eyewear brand.
FACEBOOK IS PARTNERING WITH THE PARENT COMPANY OF RAY-BAN TO MAKE ITS SMART GLASSES: LAUNCHING IN 2021.
“We’re passionate about exploring devices that can give people better ways to connect with those closest to them. Wearables have the potential to do that. With EssilorLuxottica we have an equally ambitious partner who’ll lend their expertise and world-class brand catalog to the first truly fashionable smart glasses,” Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s vice president of the Reality Labs division, said in a statement.
Watch Zuckerberg talk about the future of high-tech AR glasses (with trailer) HERE.
A new AR project is born
Image: Facebook
Facebook says the consumer smart glasses will be one step in its overall work on AR, which now includes an experimental research prototype called Project Aria, which is more like a full-fledged pair of AR glasses.
Starting this month, Facebook says the company will start testing Aria in the real world with Facebook employees and contractors to hammer out tough issues around areas like privacy, video recording, and design.
The features
Marketed as a Ray Ban branded product, the glasses may feature a voice-assistant and they will work by pairing them with a smartphone. That means the smart glasses will work- just like Snap Spectacles or Amazon Echo frames. It has been clarified that Facebook’s Ray-Ban partnership is for smart glasses without an integrated display, so closer to Snap Spectacles and similar devices and not classified as augmented reality (AR). However, the device does have a full suite of the kind of sensors that will be used in a complete AR headset.
By its nature, AR requires heaps of sensors to work. Cameras facing out to see the world, cameras facing in to see where your eyes are pointed, accelerometers to determine orientation, microphones to hear you speak, and plenty more. It’s like Google Glass times ten.
Facebook earlier this year released white papers and prototype design images of what a hybrid AR-VR devices might look like in the future (potentially a version of Project Aria). Image: Facebook.
A New trend of AR glasses
What Facebook-Ray Ban’s pair will look like beyond the Aria prototype, or how much they might cost remains still unknown. However, AR and smart glasses designed to look like standard pieces of eyewear have become more common in recent years, with companies like North (now owned by Google) and Nreal developing pretty impressive devices. Meanwhile, all the major tech giants — including Amazon, Apple, Google, Intel, and others — have either already released a device in the smart glasses or AR category, or are said to be actively working on something.
Help from Facebook to its users
Facebook also detailed a project at last year’s Oculus Connect conference it calls Live Maps, which the company says will be integral to help people use AR glasses in the real world by helping blend the virtual and real. That way, AR glasses can “download the most recent data from the 3D map, and then only have to detect changes — like new street names or the appearance of a new parking garage, and update the 3D map with those changes.”
Project Aria’s goals
Project Aria is an AR headset prototype that Facebook is using for two things:
Gathering data for AI training
Assessing the public’s perception & concerns of the technology
“Ultimately, Project Aria is going to help us develop the safeguards, policies and even social norms necessary to govern the use of AR glasses and other future wearable devices”
Starting this month, the company says, 100 or so employees will begin wearing the Aria glasses in their day-to-day lives, including in public. Facebook wants to be so ‘out in the open’ about its AR work that this first small batch of testers will be required to wear an identifying shirt and a lanyard to alert the public that the person is wearing the glasses and may be recording video and other data.
Aria will help the company understand if the headset’s sensors are sufficient for tracking the headset and understanding the world around the user.
Provided that all works out, the next step for the company would be fitting a display system inside.
Written by H.B.