Google unveils prototype ‘smart’ glasses
Last updated: June 28,
2012 12:51 am
By Tim Bradshaw and
Richard Waters in San Francisco
Google sought to leapfrog
rivals such as Apple and Microsoft as it unveiled a prototype of a pair of
“smart” glasses designed to carry out many of the functions currently done on a
smartphone, such as sharing pictures and accessing information.
The move came Wednesday as
the search company also joined the hardware wars that are rocking the consumer
technology industry, showing off the first tablet to carry its brand and a
living room entertainment device designed and built by the internet company
from the ground up.
Google said that an early
version of its new glasses would be shipped to a limited number of software
developers early next year, adding weight to the company’s attempts to
reposition itself as an innovator at a time when its size and bureaucracy is
under attack from smaller, more nimble companies including Facebook.
Sergey Brin, co-founder,
said he hoped the glasses would go on sale to consumers less than a year later.
Google Glass, which has
been in development for two and a half years, boasts a tiny display, worn like
regular spectacles but sitting just above the right eye, to show information
gathered from the internet. A bundle of sensors, microphones, speakers, cameras
and wireless connections allows the wearer to both send and receive sound and
images as they go about their daily lives.
Mr Brin showed off the
device in a demonstration to thousands of developers at a Google event in San
Francisco. Skydivers wearing the devices jumped out of an airship to land on
the building, then abseiled down its side, transmitting video as they went.
The prototypes are to be
sold to US-based attendees of the event for $1,500 for delivery early next
year.
The bombastic
demonstration of a device that has been shown to only a select few in recent
months signals Google’s hopes of bringing sweeping changes to the way people
use technology to rival the advances made by Apple.
“What is the next
form-factor of computing? We are definitely pushing the limits, we’re asking
that question,” Mr Brin said.
Two developers of Google
Glass said on stage that they hoped the technology would “work for many people
in most situations” to “catch fleeting moments in your life that would
otherwise be lost”. The device uses a lightweight, “scalable” design that can
fit over normal spectacles or sunglasses. A marketing video also showed a
mother’s viewpoint of her young baby in a normal domestic situation as Google
attempted to humanise this sci-fi product.
“I really personally am
really excited about Glass,” said Mr Brin. “There are all kinds of things that
this can capture and share. But obviously capturing images and videos and
sharing video is only part of what a wearable computer can do … This developer
community is going to be key to us.”
Announcing the Google
Glass Explore Edition, Mr Brin invited developers to “help shape” this “really
new technology”.
“You have to want to be on
the bleeding edge and this is really what this is designed for,” he said,
apologising for the fact that unspecified “regulatory stuff” meant Glass would
only be sold in the US at launch.
About 80 per cent of the
things that people do on a smartphone could be handled by the glasses, making
users “less of a slave to [their] device”, Mr Brin said.
Google has tested email,
texting, turn-by-turn navigation and video chat on its Google+ network, he
said.
Despite predicting that
the project would soon result in a consumer product, Google engineers admitted
that they still had significant hurdles to overcome. These include devising a
way for users to call up and respond to information and images, as well as to
write or input information.
They also said that the
glasses would force changes in social etiquette, since users would be able to
photograph or video people they meet automatically, or access information out
of the corner of their eye while conducting a conversation.
Vic Gundotra, the
executive in charge of Google’s social network, said Glass and its risky stunts
showed the company had a “healthy disrespect for the impossible”.
Developers lined up to
order the device, although some dismissed it as nothing more than a wearable
camera.
Copyright The Financial
Times Limited 2012.
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