Start-up Avegant has built an LED light engine that could enable device manufacturers to build small, stylish augmented reality smart glasses.
Avegant’s light engine has such quality features that, you’ll be blown away by the crystal clarity of the AR visuals created by the component.
Avegant, a start-up in San Mateo, California, has built an LED light-engine that could enable device manufacturers to build small, stylish augmented-reality smart glasses.
The pair of prototype smart glasses from Avegant gives you a glimpse of a future where we may be able to watch videos, get directions, see notifications and more, all through a pair of traditional-looking shades.
These sorts of glasses may be the next big thing as companies like Facebook, Snap, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and others look beyond phones.
Google Glass, the Microsoft Hololens, Snap’s Spectacles and, most recently, Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories glasses are all equally nice. But the prototype smart glasses have better features comparatively.
According to Avegant CEO Edward Tang, Big Tech companies will need smart glasses to look normal if they’re to have any chance at success.
So they’re desperately looking for a display component that is small and can be manufactured and shipped in the next year or two.
doesn’t make smart glasses, but it put together a prototype pair to demonstrate the capabilities of a new LED augmented-reality light engine that the company unveiled to the public this fall.
The prototype glasses looked like any normal pair of glasses except that they were tethered to a smartphone by a cable. The prototype is intended to demonstrate just how small a hardware manufacturer can make a pair of glasses using Avegant’s light engine.
Meanwhile, the company is getting their stuff ready to have the smallest manufacturable display for customers.
When you put the glasses on. A translucent blue square will come on at the center of your field of view, showing a display that was overlaid on top of what you’re seeing in real life.
There is always a small translucent screen that shows you the weather, a stock chart and a text message conversation.
If you look at the direction of someone, you could see him, but the visuals also appears on top of the person in crystal clarity.
The highlight of the smart glasses was when the glasses begins to play a video. It is a snippet of a soccer match from this summer’s Euro 2020 tournament.
You’d see the green grass, the vast crowd and the players passing the ball to one another before the forward blasted a goal into the back of the net.
Using this tournament as a test case, the games looked as good and as big as it would if I was watching at home on my living room TV or sitting with friends at a sports bar.
The Avegant light engine offers a 30-degree field of view and appears like a rectangle in the middle of your line of sight.
Cars Will Now Be Lighter, Kind Courtesy New Innovative Technology
But there are still drawbacks. Manufacturers who use the Avegant light engine will have to determine how much battery life they want their smart glasses to have.
The more battery life, the bulkier the glasses will be. Also, a 30-degree field of view is on a par with the first Hololens, but it’s a smaller window than Microsoft’s Hololens 2.
The long-term vision of the Avegant light engine is to get rid of your phone in your hand, and you’ll wear your phone on your face.
Avegant isn’t yet mass-producing its light engine. It envisions a business model in which it will sell the component to companies that can build it into their smart glasses.
Meanwhile, some people also have their doubts about the smart glasses replacing smartphones anytime in the near future, and believe it would limit Avegant’s prospects.
Credit: CNBC
