Hasta La Gadget!

A virtual touchpad projected onto limbs and other everyday surfaces? That’s the type of crazy idea we’d normally expect to see from Microsoft Research, not Google. Heck, maybe we even did, but Google is now applying to patent the concept specifically in relation to Project Glass. The system would use a tiny laser projector mounted on the arm of the spectacles to beam out QWERTY and other buttons, and then the built-in camera and processor would try to interpret finger movements in the region of those buttons. Hey presto! No more fiddling with your face.

Filed under: Displays, Wearables

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Source: USPTO

Wearable connected devices are having a moment — largely anticipatory — as excitement builds about the potential for sensor-packed mobile kit that you strap to your person and use to augment/record activity from your daily life. Yesterday Google announced the first hackathons for its Project Glass smart specs to get developers thinking about building apps for a new type of mobile device, while a smorgasbord of wearable fitness tracking gizmos such as smart watches and bracelets continue to crop up and attract attention (and sometimes a lot of cash) on crowdfunding sites.

Rumours of big name tech companies getting into wearables also continue to do the rounds, fuelled by patent filings such as this Apple Project Glass-style patent filing.  And this from Microsoft. Apple has also been rumoured to be building an iWatch. The market for smart mobile wearables is nascent and therefore unproven (one example: Pebble’s smart watch attracted close to 70,000 backers and more than $10 million in funding on Kickstarter) but there does not look to be a shortage of companies — big and small — willing to test the waters.

Analyst Juniper has taken a look at the mobile wearable devices market — parcelling up different types of devices including smart glasses, health and fitness wearables and enterprise wearables (such as scanners and tracking devices that are used for enterprise logistics and in factories) — to made its best guess as to how the market will ramp up over the next five years. In a new report the analyst predicts the market will grow from 15 million smart wearable device sales in 2013 to almost 70 million in 2017. (For a little perspective, the number of smartphones in use globally exceeded one billion in Q3 alone last year, according to Strategy Analytics). While Juniper reckons the global market for smart wearables will be worth more than $1.5 billion by 2014, up from $800 million this year.

Juniper’s wearables prediction factors in a significant ramping up towards the end of the forecast period, based on ”significant adoption… driven by the launch of augmented reality glasses and similar products from Google, Microsoft and Apple”. “Google Glass will be made available to the consumer only by late 2013 and with players like Apple & Microsoft filing wearable device patents, we expect Apple to launch similar products in the medium-longer term,” says Juniper analyst Nitin Bhas.

That’s quite a big assumption at this point so — as with all analyst forecasts — don’t take these figures as gospel. Juniper concedes there’s a fair amount of guesswork going on at this early stage. ”There are, of course, inherent challenges in forecasting a market which is early in its life-cycle,” Bhas says.  ”While Juniper Research has questioned key players on their expectations of the market for both their own projects and the market as a whole, we believe that only when several commercial roll-outs are underway can adoption rates be ascertained with a high degree of certainty.”

Caveats aside, the analyst is predicting that fitness and sports wearables will dominate the wearables market, followed by healthcare devices – taking a combined market share of more than 80 per cent in the final forecast year 2017, with the retail value of healthcare devices slightly larger than fitness and sports owing to higher retail price points. Juniper also expects consumer adoption of smart glasses to increase by 2017 as retail price declines.

The development of an app-ecosystem for wearable devices will be vital to drive adoption by building a platform around the technology, it adds. In terms of geographical markets, North America and Western Europe will dominate global wearables – representing more than 60 per cent of device sales, according to Juniper.

Bhas adds: “Juniper Research’s own research, corroborated by discussion with industry players, suggests that adoption will be highest in the U.S., but the anticipation is that usage will spread to selected European and Asian markets during the five years for which roll outs are forecast in the report.”

Sales of smart wearable devices will reach nearly 70m by 2017, new research claims, though not all of the body-worn gadgets will be augmented reality eyewear such as Google’s Project Glass. Smart glasses will only make up a part of the overall smart wearable industry, Juniper Research predicts, with health and fitness devices such as Jawbone’s UP and Fitbit’s Flex dominating the segment until the price of more advanced technology falls to consumer-friendly points.

Even by 2017, activity monitors will continue to represent the lion’s share of the wearable’s market, Juniper expects. Fitness and sports wearables, combined with healthcare devices, will together hold more than 80-percent of the share, with health commanding a higher overall value despite lower sales, thanks to greater individual prices.

While Google has already shown its hand in the wearables space, other big names are expected to weigh in within the next 4-5 years. “Juniper envisages significant adoption towards the end of the forecast period, driven by the launch of augmented reality glasses and similar products from Google, Microsoft and Apple” it’s suggested; both Microsoft and Apple have flirted with AR research, at least going by recent patent applications (such as Microsoft’s live event AR and Apple’s head-mounted displays) but neither has publicly declared intentions.

Just as apps have accelerated the smartphone marketplace, so Juniper predicts the same happening in the wearables space. “The development of the smartphone/app store model has opened up new avenues for other segments within the market, such as the wearable device market, by combining mobility with an efficient method of software delivery” analyst Nitin Bhas suggests. “The simultaneous development of app-ecosystem and wearable devices will integrate technologies, such as augmented reality, into human life more seamlessly.”

That market will be worth over $1.5bn by 2014, Bhas claims, roughly double what it is today. Advanced activity trackers have already begun to edge under the $100 barrier, though wearable displays are likely to cost significantly more for some time, given the challenges of distilling compact phone technology into a body-worn device. Google’s initial Glass Explorer Edition devices, targeting developers, are priced at $1,500 apiece, for instance, while Vuzix’s Smart Glasses M100, shown off at CES last week are expected to come in at “under $500″ when they launch this year.

Wearables surge by 2017 predicted as Google Glass and more weigh in is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google may be beavering away on the last stages of Project Glass before the Explorer version arrives with developers, but meanwhile DIY wearable computers are springing up, some with Apple’s iOS at their core. A straightforward combination of an iPod touch, off-the-shelf wearable display, Bluetooth camera and a set of safety goggles was enough for AI researcher Rod Furlan to get a glimpse at the benefits of augmented reality, he writes at IEEE Spectrum, though the headset raised as many questions as it provided answers.

Furlan’s hardware falls roughly in line with what we’ve seen other projects piece together in earlier AR attempts. He opted for a MyVu eyepiece – a 0.44-inch microdisplay culled from a cheap Crystal headset, such as used in this UMPC-based wearable back in 2009, and this Beagleboard version in 2010 – hooked up to the composite video output of a 4th-gen iPod touch; that way, he can see a mirror of the iPod’s UI floating in his line of sight.

Meanwhile, a Looxie Bluetooth Video Camera – stripped of its casing and attached to the goggles – streams video to the iPod touch wirelessly. Furlan says he’s cooking up a second-gen version running off a Raspberry Pi, again another approach we’ve seen other wearables experimenters take. That, Furlan says, will allow for more flexibility with the Looxie’s input, as well as greater support for other sensors such as accelerometers.

The interesting part is how Furlan’s experience of the wearable evolved, from initial discomfort and a sense of information overload – the feeling of needing to keep up with every notification, server status, stock price, and message that pops up – to a less conscious consumption of the data flow:

“When I wear my prototype, I am connected to the world in a way that is quintessentially different from how I’m connected with my smartphone and computer. Our brains are eager to incorporate new streams of information into our mental model of the world. Once the initial period of adaptation is over, those augmented streams of information slowly fade into the background of our minds as conscious effort is replaced with subconscious monitoring” Rod Furlan

That fits in line with what we’ve heard from Google itself; Glass project chief Babak Parviz said recently that part of the company’s work on software has been to deliver a pared-back version of the usual gush of information that hits our smartphone and tablet displays. Developers, for instance, will be able to use a set of special cloud APIs to prioritize specific content that gets delivered to the Android-based wearable.

Furlan concludes that the biggest advantage of wearables won’t be overlaying data on top of the real world – what we know as augmented or mediated reality – but being able to persistently record (and recall) all of our experiences. That does differ from Google’s perception, where capturing photos and videos is only seen as a subset of Glass, and the headset is gradually being positioned as a way to access a curated feed of the digital world, whether that be from Google Now prompts or something else.

[via] 9to5Mac]

DIY Google Glass puts iOS in front of your eyes is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google’s Glass wearable computer has been spotted in the wild in New York City, complete with what appears to be integrated prescription lenses. The bright red augmented reality headset – set to ship to developers in $1,500 Explorer Edition form early in the new year – was spotted by a Road to Virtual Reality tipster on what’s presumably a lucky Googler testing Glass while out and about.

Google’s Sergey Brin sported a set of Glass with sunglasses lenses back at Google IO, with the tinted sections apparently clipping into the brow frame. Meanwhile, Google had also confirmed that it was looking at prescription lens support.

Google is also exploring the potential to integrate the Glass display cube into a set of prescription lenses themselves, rather than using a separate display altogether. That would require more precise optical work, of course, and could prove significantly more expensive when it comes to changing your prescription.

Exactly how well the Explorer version will handle lenses remains to be seen; Google has described it as a test kit for developers to begin coding augmented reality-compatible apps, rather than the final form-factor of the hardware. It’s also believed to feature a bone-conduction earpiece for sound inaudible to anyone but the wearer. Judging by what look to be discrete metal lens rims, however, it’s an altogether slicker system than the large black glasses Google showed photos of at I/O 2012.

Google Glass spotted in wild with prescription lenses is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.