At the Google I/O event that took place yesterday at San Fransisco’s Moscone Center (USA), Google had a spectacular demonstration of the glasses called Google Glass via a live Google+ hangout involving four parachutists who jumped out of a blimp above the city and landed on the roof of centre. Each wore Google Glass spectacles that broadcast everything they saw.
To add to the spectacle, stunt cyclists and climbers who performed “Spider Man” moves along the side of the building joined a happy and relieved Sergey Brin (Google Co-Founder) on stage to a standing ovation from the attendees that enjoyed the demonstration.
Project Glass is a research and development program by Google to develop a head-mounted display. Google Labs have been busy with the development of the product, which culminated in the demonstration at Google I/O yesterday.
The product — Google Glass Explorer Edition — will be available to United States Google I/O developers for US$1,500, and will be shipped in early 2013. It seems the intention for Project Glass products would be to display information hands free, and allow interaction with the Internet viavoice commands like in the case of Apple’s Siri.
The first Project Glass demo demonstrated via the Google+ Hangout yesterday resembles a pair of normal eye glasses. The lens is replaced by a heads-up display. In future, Google is working on new designs that will possibly allow integration of the display into people’s normal eyewear.
The glasses will run Google’s Android operating system.
Brin had this to say as he introduced the public spectacle, “you’ve seen demos that were slick and robust. This will be nothing like that,”
He continued, “this could go wrong in about 500 different ways.”
The glasses are said to be as light as regular glasses, they come with a button on top to take photos and videos, and a transparent screen to show the information. As demonstrated, they sit just above a person’s regular vision line so that they don’t interfere with ordinary vision.
Google says they’re better for capturing a first-person view of the world like adventure activities where a person has to use their hands for the activity and can’t hold a camera.
The current product — Google Glass Explorer Edition — is a similar offering to what GoPro offer with their head mounted camera offerings, although the Google Glass is slicker. Also, it is only with later versions and more features added that Google will be able to differentiate from competitors’ head mounted camera offerings.
