We knew that Facebook was already working on developing augmented reality glasses as one of its key research tasks on AR/VR. However, there has been no significant progress with that line of work, until now.
CNBC reported that Facebook is looking for a partnership with Ray-Ban’s parent company Luxottica. With their help, Facebook can complete the project codenamed ‘Orion’ and make the smart glasses available for consumers between 2023 to 2025 (as sources suggest).
The codename ‘Orion’ is actually for the smart glasses that Facebook working on. It also believed that they are designed to replace smartphones – which changes everything on how/what we interact with.
The smart glasses will reportedly allow you to take calls, get information directly on the glass, and sharing your location as well. This reminds us of Microsoft’s HoloLens – which is still something impressive.
To complement the functionality of the smart glasses, Facebook is also working on an AI-powered voice assistant which should make it easy to interact with the smart glasses and act as the user input method. One of the people who worked on the device told CNBC that they were struggling to reduce the size of the device to make it appealing for the consumers.
So, Facebook’s interest to get help makes it seem obvious that Mark Zuckerberg is really looking forward to making this happen on a priority basis – but we will have to see where it goes.
It is something exciting to look for in the near future. Maybe, not everyone will like the idea of a device being part of their daily routine to be controlled by Facebook. In addition to all the details, neither Facebook or Luxottica have not responded for any comments. We will make sure to give you an update – if they do.
What do you think of the idea of smart glasses? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Filed in . Read more about Augmented Reality (AR) and Facebook.