Are Augmented Reality Glasses Finally Practical?

Wow I have to admit I didn’t see this one coming. I thought the technology for this is a few more years off. In some of my previous speculation, I put augmented reality on my list of technology that will change the world in this decade. This is a way of combining the Internet with reality.

Here’s a video showing how the first generation technology will work.

The catch to this is right now you have to look through a smartphone screen. This is very small and not immersive. The eventual goal is to have it over your whole field of vision. Therefore you need glasses or contact lenses that have displays and all sorts of other goodies in them.

Well Google has made some glasses to do just this. I am sure of a few things though. These will be fairly primitive compared to how they will work in a few years. However, if Google releases the code to make it work, people from all over the world will have a prototype to start developing augmented reality applications. Just like Kinetics from Microsoft, people will come out with all sorts of amazing ideas that Google never thought of.

This technology will also enable learning anywhere, anytime. That’s massively disruptive to traditional education.

Awesome!

• Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses by Year’s End – NYTimes.com

  • People who constantly reach into a pocket to check a smartphone for bits of information will soon have another option: a pair of Google-made glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time.

    According to several Google employees familiar with the project who asked not to be named, the glasses will go on sale to the public by the end of the year. These people said they are expected “to cost around the price of current smartphones,” or $250 to $600.

  • The people familiar with the Google glasses said they would be Android-based, and will include a small screen that will sit a few inches from someone’s eye. They will also have a 3G or 4G data connection and a number of sensors including motion and GPS.
  • The glasses will have a low-resolution built-in camera that will be able to monitor the world in real time and overlay information about locations, surrounding buildings and friends who might be nearby, according to the Google employees.
  • One Google employee said the glasses would tap into a number of Google software products that are currently available and in use today, but will display the information in an augmented reality view, rather than as a Web browser page like those that people see on smartphones.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.