Intel is said to sell Augmented Reality (AR) smart glasses soon this year. Over the years, fellow folks have been trying and failing at the smart glasses game. These glasses are called Vaunt, which was first reported by The Verge.
The glasses are nearly indistinguishable from any regular glasses. Instead of any cumbersome headset along with the special screen, Intel smart glasses are a simple plastic frame that weighs under 50 grams, the exact weight of snap spectacles. The Intel smart glasses work with prescription or non-prescription lenses, and no camera is provided for it.
From the outside, the Vaunt looks like any other ordinary glass. There is no button, no glowing LCD screen, no speaker, and no microphone. When the glasses are worn, there is a stream of information that looks like a screen, but it is actually projected into the retina of the eyes.
“It is a class one laser. Such low power that we don’t [need it certified], and in the case of [Vaunt], it is so low-power that it’s at the very bottom end of a class one laser.” As remarked by Eastwood.
Vaunt displays a small heads-up style in peripheral vision. The smart glass can show messages, directions, and notifications. It can be connected to Bluetooth either from Android or an iPhone, just like the smartwatch does, taking commands from the app that runs in the background to control it.
On the right stem of the glass, there are electronics designed to power a very low-power laser. That laser helps to show a monochrome image somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 x 150 pixels onto a holographic reflector on the glasses’ right lens. The image is automatically reflected into the back of the eyeball, directly on the retina, and might let us know of someone’s birthday, send a notification from a phone or it may even detect that we are in the kitchen and even send recipes. As the laser is beaming directly on the retina the image is always at the focus.
In the future, it might be provisioned with microphones and Smart Assistants like Alexa or Siri, the first models will be controlled through motion gestures like a nod of the head. Intel hopes to get this glasses into the life of the customers as naturally as possible.
Thus the Intel Vaunt is the most promising version of smart glasses that we have ever seen. The project is still in its early stages of development so there is still more to hope and see in the development of the product.
