Google to launch Heads-Up Display Glasses by the End of 2012

From a technological advancement point of view; there has never been a better time to be alive, with improvements to technology coming thick and fast as well as the constant introduction of new and seriously impressive gadgets and consumer electronic devices.

Every now and then, we hear rumors surrounding a new product which is reported to be going to hit the shelves and it makes us salivate with anticipation. One such rumor came a couple of weeks back and focused on the fact that Google have been working on a heads-up display type product which is built into a pair of wearable glasses and would feature a number of cutting edge technologies. Today, that speculation has grown with The New York Timesclaiming that sources have confirmed the product.

At present we don’t know a great deal about the Google-branded glasses, but the previously aired speculation claimed that they would feature an embedded display which would be only an inch or two away from the wearers eye. They will include a display, mere inches from the wearer’s eye, streaming real-time info about your surroundings, similar to the various augmented reality applications we’ve seen on smartphones.

The data will be fetched through a 3G/4G data connection, and the glasses will retrieve information about their surroundings through GPS and several sensors.

 

The glasses will cost “around the price of current smartphones,” sources say. While definitely not very precise – current smartphones cost anywhere from $150 to $600 – this price range shows that Google intends the glasses as a product for the mass market.

Will these glasses be something you need as opposed to want? We doubt it – we haven’t seen a must-have augmented reality application yet, although we have seen some very cool ones in the past.

The glasses will send data to the cloud and then use things like Google Latitude to share location, Google Goggles to search images and figure out what is being looked at, and Google Maps to show other things nearby, the Google employee said. “You will be able to check in to locations with your friends through the glasses,” they added.

Everyone I spoke with who was familiar with the project repeatedly said that Google was not thinking about potential business models with the new glasses. Instead, they said, Google sees the project as an experiment that anyone will be able to join. If consumers take to the glasses when they are released later this year, then Google will explore possible revenue streams.

This may all seem a bit ‘virtual reality’ but we are getting to the point where that kind of functionality is becoming a reality. The actual hardware configuration of the final product remains to be seen, but the glasses could also feature an integrated flash for the camera, as well as the ability to accept voice input from the user, and all reportedly powered by the Android mobile operating system.

If the proposed internal display is correct, the implementation of augmented reality technology into the glasses in order to give the surrounding’s information to the user would be truly stunning and opens up a whole new realm of possibility for developers should Google decide to allow them to explore that route.

When it comes to these kind of products, buyers generally tend to rule with their hearts rather than their heads and although I can’t seeing anyone actually ‘needing’ these glasses, I think pretty much all gadget and technology fans will want them.