Smart glasses, the eyewear technology that layers information onto a user’s field of view (FOV), started off in the form of simple front-end displays. Over the years, smart glasses technology has progressed to being capable of performing complex computer-powered tasks.
Unlike the 100% immersive virtual reality headsets, smart glasses blend information from physical and digital worlds for users simultaneously, which provides a much more natural experience. This experience is achieved either through an Optical Head-Mounted Display (OHMD), Augmented Reality (AR) technology, or through Heads Up Display Glasses (HUD).
Despite its continuous growth and value potential for enterprises and industries, smart glasses technology as a whole still faces challenges that have delayed marketing at a large scale.
Challenges
Smart glasses companies are currently striving to strengthen their base. Even though businesses are finding great workflow solutions through smart glasses technology, it will take some more time before people are able to reap the benefits of mass-accessibility and usage.
Smart glasses producers have realised that in order to reach mass-market usage, they must first overcome the challenge of technology which includes balancing functionality and wearability at an affordable cost.
According to Fast Company, “the sheer number of components needed to make AR glasses function will be hard to squeeze into a design that you wouldn’t mind wearing around all day. This includes cameras to pinpoint physical location, cameras to track the movement of eyes to see what you’re looking at, displays large enough to overlay the full breadth of your field of view, processors to power the displays, and the computer vision AI that identifies objects, and a small and efficient power supply.”
Moreover, ensuring comfort design and cooling mechanisms to compensate for intense computation will be key for mass-adoption.
Despite these challenges, many smart glasses are available, which provide great value to their existing users.
Smart glasses
Here are a few highly-rated smart glasses:
Lenovo ThinkReality A6
The ThinkReality A6 AR headset comes with inside-out 6DoF tracking to optimise AR experiences and enable industrial versatility. This smart glasses technology device is designed to help the workforce use AR applications to receive expert help, reduce repair times, reduce errors, streamline complex workflows, improve training quality, and save costs.
Epson Moverio BT-300
This is a lightweight eyewear device that contains a front-facing camera, motion tracker, and a display on each lens. The smart glasses technology device is suitable for entertainment, manufacturing, medical science, and more.
Vuzix M300
These smart glasses provide agility at the workplace, with fully connected staff and managers. It facilitates industry operations through a wide range of apps, a built-in HD camera, AMLCD display, and more.
Mira Prism Pro
As no plugs, computers, or wires are needed, this smart glasses technology AR headset offers an alternative way to interact with holographic images. The company has recently raised $ 10 million in funding and aims to focus exclusively on industrial use of the headsets. The Mira Prism Pro device includes external cameras and a see-through interface, which allows for hands-free intuitive interactions with the real world.
HoloLens
The HoloLens is an untethered mixed reality device that is designed to deliver value instantly. Smart glasses technology users can benefit from cloud and AI services from Microsoft—including reliability, security, and scalability.
Uses
Video collaboration
The most prominent application for smart glasses technology today is definitely video collaboration. The ability to work together with experts remotely in a “see-what-I-see” system is improving many sectors. This smart glasses technology is applicable from field service to complex engineering support, and remote assistance functionality is encouraging more companies to incorporate the smart glasses technology into their workflows.
Complex manufacturing
Assembly lines are all about speed, productivity, accuracy, compliance, and quality control. These are the areas where smart glasses technology can deliver. In tasks where every detail counts, automotive and aerospace manufacturers implement eyewear devices to bring real-time solutions to production.
Logistics and warehousing
While keeping their hands free and receiving directions and visual cues directly in their field of view, warehouse workers can quickly spot, collect, and deliver items. Smart glasses technology is substituting handheld devices, scanners, and printed materials. As a result, the productivity of employees increases while errors decrease.
Building and construction
By using smart glasses technology, construction workers are able to experience a safer, more productive hands-free workflow. Structural inspections and errors can also be identified more easily and corrected through remote solutions in real-time.
Validation functionality
Augmented reality solutions are invaluable in maintenance. Smart glasses technology allows technicians to receive step-by-step visual prompts to help accomplish tasks such as assembling, repair, or maintenance procedures. The head-mounted displays also come in handy for technicians to validate the actions to make sure that every step was correctly executed.
Consumer-level
Even though the consumer market still has to grow, we can already see use cases in various areas. For example, AR guides are being used to boost visitors’ experiences in museums, some theatres rely on eyewear to provide instant subtitling to visitors, and tourists can easily find their way around through projected navigation directions and reviews. Athletes can even have access to real-time speed, power, distance, and other performance indicators. Drone pilots conveniently see their drone’s field of view. All these are critical and worthy niches, even if they are still way behind mass adoption.
Future potential
The present use of smart glasses technology is convincing more and more businesses to come on board. Although the widespread public usage is still some way off, smart glasses technology has found valuable areas to operate, develop, and grow. These are so helpful that it is not surprising to hear that tech giants like Apple, Facebook, and Samsung are working on their AR-powered smart glasses.
Imagine being able to update the knowledge you need directly to an eyewear database. This allows a hands-free workforce with instant access to targeted knowledge directly in their field of view. Such an implementation would ultimately raise quality control, improve maintenance, provide faster and more reliable solutions, save money on management and training, and facilitate remote assistance, among a host of other uses.
Until mass-market glasses finally hit the stores, the smart glasses technology will continue to work in facilities, warehouses, and construction sites worldwide.