Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the F8 Developers Conference in San Jose in 2017.
Photographer: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg
Photographer: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg
The planned smart glasses from Facebook Inc. will arrive “sooner or later” in 2021, but will not have the kind of digital overlay technology associated with augmented reality, according to hardware chief Andrew Bosworth.
The glasses, which are being built in partnership with Ray-Ban and the mother Luxottica Group SpA will connect to a device – although users are not able to superimpose digital objects on their view of the real world, a fundamental element of AR.
“These are certainly connected glasses, they are certainly providing a lot of functionality, [but] we are being very shy about exactly what functionality we are providing, ”said Bosworth. “We are excited about this, but we don’t want to overdo it. We are not even calling it augmented reality, we are just calling it ‘smart glasses’ ”, he added.
Facebook announced plans for AR glasses in 2017 and has since built a handful of camera features that allow people to project digital images into the physical world, such as photographic filters that distort the face. The company has invested substantial resources in hardware development in recent years, acquiring virtual reality startup Oculus and launching a home video device called Portal. Facebook’s VR, AR and hardware teams have more than 6,000 employees, according to a person familiar with their team. It is a larger group than Facebook, working on apps for billions of Instagram and WhatsApp users.
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Smart glasses are part of a long-term effort within the company to capture the next big computing platform after the smartphone. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a strong supporter of AR and VR, although this first iteration of Facebook’s glasses does not offer the eventual promise of augmented reality, which is the ability to mix the digital and physical worlds through one lens. Bosworth did not disclose the feature set for the glasses to come, but said that they align with Facebook’s broader philosophy around RA, which is to make technology peripheral to human interactions in order to increase “presence” .
A common situation cited by Bosworth is that of parents trying to record memories with their young children: “The moment you turn on the phone, not only have you probably forgotten it, but if you haven’t lost it, you’re probably watching the real event, but through your phone, ”he said. “If you have the right technology, it can get out of the way.”
Facebook is the latest technology company trying to create a pair of smart glasses. Alphabet Inc.’s Google came into the category early with Google Glass, which never became popular as a consumer device, but found a home as a work aid in warehouses and industrial environments. Snap Inc. has also launched several iterations of its smart glasses, called eyeglasses, that allow people to record videos with their hands free and transfer them to their phones. Apple Inc. is also building a pair of smart glasses.