Intel Working On AR Smart Glasses That You May Like

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Intel will reportedly launch AR smart glasses towards the end of this year, according to The Verge. The chipmaker is surely taking a bold step by coming up with smart glasses as we have already seen Google Glasses and Snap Spectacles failing to catch the trend.

Intel AR smart glasses – what it does

Dubbed as Vaunt, Intel smart glasses are lightweight (just under 50 grams), and has a plastic frame, according to The Verge, which claims to have seen the glasses. Owing to their weight, Vaunt’s codename inside Intel was “Superlite.”

The glasses are not as feature rich as Google Glass, but can perform basic functions like popping up notifications for the user, who can then check them while doing other tasks. The glass also shows a person’s birthday and other personal info while a user is chatting with the other person on the phone.

Further, the motion sensors in the glass can detect the location of the user in the house. For instance, it can throw up a list of recipes or shopping list if the user is in the kitchen, notes Engadget.

For those worried about the laser beam light pointing right into their eyeball, Vaunt seems to have taken care of it. “…it is so low-power that it’s at the very bottom end of a class one laser,” Mark Eastwood of Intel’s New Devices Group told The Verge. Also, the display would not be visible unless the user looks at it.

Intel AR glasses will come with Bluetooth connectivity for smartphones, a processor for apps, an accelerometer and a compass to inform the wearer about direction and location. In the coming days, Intel AR glasses could come with a microphone that works with voice assistance like Alexa or Siri.

Making it light and flexible

The primary aim of Intel’s team was to develop smart glasses that a user could wear all day. For this, the first objective was to lower the weight. Eastwood stated that smart glasses usually have batteries integrated into the entire system making the glass very rigid and inconvenient for a user to adjust to the head size.

“It’s very important when you look at eyewear that it deforms along its entire length to fit your head,” Eastwood said.

This is why all the electronics in Vaunt’s smart glasses are fitted inside two little modules, which are placed into the stems of the glass.

Similar to Google Glass, Intel AR smart glasses would also launch as an “early access program” for developers later this year. However, Intel has a different goal compared to what Google had. The chip maker does not intend to market it as a product that can change users life, rather, the Superlite glass are made in a way to easily fit into the daily routine of the user, notes The Verge.

As of now Intel, has not clarified on when its smart glasses would hit the shelves. However, the chipmaker does say that the OEM route is the preferred choice than selling the product themselves.

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