Augmented Reality Glasses and What the Future Holds

The future is here. All those science fiction books and the awe-inspiring technologies they spoke of are starting to manifest in reality. Today's prominent example of this is Google's Project Glass. This project centers on a display unit in the form of a headset. The headset is able to show video and play audio and merely has to be to plugged into the computing unit on the side of the glasses by a power connector to be recharged. This means the device can be recharged at any point wherever you are.

Several other companies are launching similar products. Motorola Solutions has announced a headset to be used by maintenance engineers and emergency services. Oakley came out with Airwave, which is a pair of ski goggles that are able to judge the person's speed and the size of the jumps they've made. Devises like these seem to be the next big thing, and several different companies revealed their prototypes at the Consumer Electronics Show recently.

Even smartphone technology is being paired with headset computing to create "smart glasses." An Android-powered set of "smart glasses" are supposed to be released before the end of this year by Vuzix. Microsoft too has gotten involved in this new technology; they have filed a patent for digital glasses that display information without obstructing the user's view of what is around them.

What sets Google's headset apart from the others is that these glasses will play audio without needing earphones. You might be thinking, "so what, it's just going to have speakers? Well that's not it either. The company is actually working to patent a new technology that would conduct sound through the skull via vibrations in the frame of the glasses. The sound would pass through the skull and into the user's inner ear. This idea is not completely new as Beethoven himself used a similar technique to listen to his compositions when he began experiencing hearing loss. The technology itself later was further developed by the military to monitor communication.

Some people have commented that using this type of technology leads to diminished sound quality. Hopefully Google will be able to find a solution for this problem. It is uncertain right now how high demand in this market will be, or whether Google's first generation of these devices will display news, weather, and the like, which they have discussed in concept videos. Either way, Google says they plan to release the eyewear before 2014 ends, so we should know soon enough!

BBC Photo by : Antonio Zugaldia