Recently Google unveiled “Project Glass“, a potentially revolutionary augmented reality headset allowing users to take photos, make calls, send texts and browse the internet.

Google’s Project Glass Prototype

Google Co-Founder Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin unveiling the Project Glass Prototype.

Watch this video to get a feel of what is Google’s ‘Project Glass’ about.

Released by Google, this video follows a potential day in the life of a Google glasses user.

While wearing these pair of glasses, you can see directions to your destination appear literally before your eyes. You can check weather forecast and news or talk to friends over video chat while sharing your surroundings with them or even buy a few things online as you walk around. These glasses can do everything you now need a smartphone or tablet computer to accomplish BUT this is JUST A PROTOTYPE for now. They don’t exist YET!

Google’s Project Glass page on Google+ has following description (You can provide your opinions and ideas on the same page):

We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t.
A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.
Please follow along as we share some of our ideas and stories. We’d love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?

Source: https://plus.google.com/111626127367496192147/posts

According to Google: Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery. Augmented Reality in simple terms is the fusion of digital information with viewer’s real environment.

It’s like the “Terminator vision,” as in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. When the films would cut to the robot’s point of view, you’d see it scan the environment and analyze everything about every object in the frame.Or in the latest Mission Impossible movie where a character is wearing contact-lenses and he sees people and BOOM- he can see their profiles instantly.  It is COOL!

Of course Google is not the only one doing research in this arena. Pranav Mistry’s Sixth Sense technology is somewhat like Google’s Project Glass. See Pranav Mistry’s TED-Talk on 6th sense technology yourself :

Microsoft with it’s product Kinect is also doing some noticeable research (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/augmented/). 

My Opinion:

I think it will take at least 5-6 years of research and development before Augmented Reality as demonstrated by Google becomes a reality.

While people are still bickering about how weird the Glasses look, I want to commend Google.

In the field of futuristic research, it is making the news almost everyday it seems which is not helping it one bit since the investors are still not happy with Google. Google shares are down 2% this year at last Thursday’s close of $632.32 (It was $$645.41 on 3rd April before unveiling Project Glass), that’s despite having increased revenue nearly 30% in 2012 and boosting profit more than 20%.

What I think is if Google is going to promote wild R&D dreams like Google Glass and Auto Driving car, it had better get in touch with some of the more mundane tasks of management, such as talking with investors.