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Racing Towards Innovation: How a Battle to Build The Best AR Glasses is Hotting up in The World of Tech

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The race to develop the best augmented reality infused glasses may be set to reach fever pitch in 2021 with tech-giants like Apple seemingly set to announce their first entry into the market. But what does the future hold for AR wearables?

Ever since the arrival of the iPod, Apple has made gargantuan efforts to position itself at the forefront of innovative technology. So it’s perhaps no surprise that the world became captivated by rumours last year that the industry leaders were preparing to launch their first entry into the wearable AR market, the Apple Glass in early 2021.

When Jon Prosser claimed to leak the news about the Apple Glass release date, he predicted a product that featured displays for both eyes, a gesture control system and a retail price of around $500 US dollars.

Although we’re yet to receive confirmation of the release from the company itself, speculation has been rife surrounding the level of technology that’s set to be packed into the hotly-anticipated arrival of Apple Glass.

Although the world has already enjoyed a taste of what a future of wearable AR might look like in the 2013 release of Google Glass, the technology that’s set to be placed under the bonnet of the industry’s 2021 releases could be revolutionary.

IEEE Spectrum speculates that the technology behind Apple Glass will be dependent on the experience that Apple has chosen to offer users – meaning that there could be a dichotomy of possibilities.

One possibility is that the AR glasses will simply display information about what’s in front of the wearer via text or icons that appear in the peripheral vision of wearers – meaning that the text won’t change as you move your head.

The other possibility is that Apple will place data or graphics so that they’ll appear attached to or overlaid upon objects or people in the environment surrounding wearers. In this setup, as a wearer moves their head, the data will move out of their vision as objects do, while new data will appear that’s relevant to new objects that have arrived in the line of sight.

The latter of the two technological setups is more difficult to create but adheres more to the sort of experience that users are anticipating when they hear the term ‘AR glasses’.

Could AR Glasses Replace The Smartphone?

The AR wearables industry is set for a bright future, regardless of whether Apple’s long-anticipated smart glasses arrive sooner or later.

(Image: Mordor Intelligence)

As we can see from Mordor Intelligence charts, augmented reality applications are set to grow at a faster pace than that of VR, due to the ease of incorporating the technology into existing popular devices and more discreet wearables.

The success of organizations like Niantic has caused AR gaming to take over the past decade, and they’re now developing their own set of AR glasses that are being developed with gaming in mind. The all-encompassing rise of Pokemon Go has been a revelation for an AR gaming industry that was attempting to find its footing in the industry. Now, the transfer of AR gaming from the restrictions of a smartphone to the boundless possibilities of glasses could pave the way for a new era of hands-free gaming.

So, could AR glasses outpace smartphones in more areas than gaming over the coming years? AR Post notes that AR glasses are a long way from earning the full level of concentration and support that they’ll need to truly fulfil their potential, but this doesn’t mean that they won’t ultimately start replacing handheld devices.

There are some caveats to the rise of AR glasses along the way, however, and one of the biggest hurdles still to overcome refers to the design of the glasses themselves. Today, creating visually appealing glasses integrated with hardware can be difficult to master. One day, perhaps technology may develop to the point where users could buy a pair of standard-looking glasses that convert to AR at the touch of a button, but this level of discreet technology is some way away.

Despite a world without smartphones seeming unimaginable, the level of technology that can further optimize AR glasses, like implemented mind computer chips, the flexibility they afford to users and direction that consumer trends appear to be taking, AR glasses may well pose a threat to the future of the smartphone.

(Image: Grand View Research)

While Grand View Research anticipates some growth in a market that enables both tethered AR headsets and smartphone-enabled AR headsets, the growth will belong more to tethered headsets as the decade continues.

Over the course of this time, it’s likely that non-glasses wearers will be more favourable towards utilizing some form of AR smart glasses due to the rise of specialist wearables like blue-light glasses that help to protect the vision of wearers. With major brands like EyeGlasses, all stocking blue-light protective glasses and computer vision spectacles for otherwise healthy sighted users, the AV glasses push towards mainstream adoption is likely to be smoother in the near future.

The State of The Competition

Apple isn’t the only company looking to ramp up its development of AR glasses. Both Facebook and Google are attempting to enter and re-enter the market respectively with their own efforts in the augmented reality space.

Reasoning that uptake for AR and VR wearables alike could become more commonplace in a post-Covid society, Social Media Today notes that the technology could make a more seamless entry into home office spaces due to the rise of remote work.

It may also point to why efforts to develop the technology appear to have gathered pace over the past 12 months – with AR technology potentially enabling users to better interact with the world around them through digital overlays and connective tools, all while sitting at home.

In making its foray into the industry, Google acquired AR glasses maker North as a means of creating physically striking glasses designs that are packed with technology.

While Google has a history in creating AR wearables with its initial release of Google Glass, it’s reasonable to acknowledge that the market, and technology on show, wasn’t quite ready for release. Google’s re-entry into the market in competition with Apple and Facebook shows that there could be something of an augmented space race to develop the most popular glasses underway – with the leading product carrying the prospect of widespread adoption across the digital sector with it.

To ensure that they’re well in the race for AR wearables, Facebook acquired microLED maker Plessey in March 2020, enabling the tech-giants to gain access to a key component for their AR glasses. With all three giants building their repertoire of AR development technology, the coming months and years are set to be significant in the battle for developing the most resonant AR glasses.

Life Behind a Contact Lens

The AR glasses world may soon face some impressive competition in the form of augmented contact lenses. Although the Mojo Lens is still very much a work in progress, some of the technical details associated with the prototyping of the product is exciting to hear about. It boasts a MicroLED display, which sits just off the surface of the eye at the centre of the lens, and 70,000 pixels that are packed into an area approximately the size of a grain of sand – amounting to a 14K resolution screen being delivered straight to your eye.

“We’ve had to invent most of everything we put in the lens,” ~Mojo vice president of product and marketing explained to VentureBeat. “As you can imagine, we’ve invented our own display. We’ve invented our own oxygenation system, we’ve invented our own power data, we’ve invented our own ASICS (custom chips) and power management tools. We’re inventing our own algorithms for eye-tracking.”

The Potential of Augmented Reality

We can gain a taste of what the future holds for AR glasses by looking at some of the most impressive augmented tools that exist today.

Take Mira for example, an augmented reality tool that could fundamentally change workplace training, according to Martin Duffy of PwC.

“It involves installing a phone app and buying a headset, which costs about €150, that clips to the phone,” Duffy explained to The Irish Times. “It doesn’t require expensive machines and so becomes a truly mobile experience. The headset projects an image onto a screen, which can be navigated and explored by eye movements. It could allow remote training, enabling trainees to play, rewind and pause challenging instructions while continuing with the task in hand. Their progress can be monitored and assessed.”

Another key part of Mira’s functionality, ‘Remote Expert’ allows team members to connect remotely with an expert, who can share the same view and provide instructions on the next steps to take.

The development of AR glasses can transform the accessibility of apps like Mira to workers around the world in a post-Covid landscape punctuated by remote work. In a landscape that’s ripe for innovation in the age of the new normal, AR glasses could play a revolutionary role in accelerating the recovery of businesses following the pandemic. 

Image Credit: Unsplash

Source: https://datafloq.com/read/racing-towards-innovation-how-battle-build-the-best-ar-glasses-hotting-the-world-tech/11800

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