Bose AR Glasses Hears Out The World For You
The company announced light-weight AR glasses that uses sound to add a layer of augmentation to the user's perception.
Bose, a company which is primarily known for high-quality audio peripherals, has entered the field of Augmented Reality or AR with its AR glasses which uses sound rather than a bulky screen hanging in front your eyes. The Bose AR glasses use sound to add a layer of augmentation to the user’s perception.
Unveiled at SXSW festival, the 3D printed Bose AR glasses look just like any ordinary pair of sunglasses which may not draw any unnecessary attention while using them in public.
They are light and have a perfect fit for the wearer. All the electronics are embedded in the frame of the glasses. The Bose AR has two narrow directional speakers on the ends of the stem which funnels sound directly into the ears while others can’t hear a thing unless they have the really good sense of hearing.
The Bose AR glasses knows where the user is seeing and with a double-tap on the left or right touch bar, it speaks out the information about the object or location the user is viewing.
Bose says that their AR glasses use an inbuilt sensor that can identify where the user is facing, working with GPS coordinates from a smartphone which is paired with the AR glasses to quintessentially “see” where the user is facing with high precision.
In Addition to knowing where the user is seeing, the AR glasses also reacts to head gestures to pick up calls or to navigate the audio-based menu by tilting the head. And, the user can also use his/her voice to control the AR gear.
As expected from Bose, the sound quality is phenomenal but what is the use of an AR platform if it doesn’t have any kind of 3rd party apps to use with. That’s why Bose has announced a $50 million venture fund for startups which ship apps on the platform. Major tech firms like ASICS Studio, Strava, TripAdvisor, and Yelp also signed up to work with Bose.
Bose didn’t announce anything on price or complete specs. For now, there will only be a limited release of the glasses for developers (along with the SDK) this summer.
The aim of Bose isn’t just to incorporate or add services to their platform, but Bose wants developers to build audio AR into other form factors as well.
The usefulness of this new tech will only depend on what developers do with it. But determined on the hardware costs, the Bose AR platform provides a renewed and low-risk way to think about augmented reality. In the future, this technology could easily be incorporated into a visual AR platform since both visual and audio platforms require a deep understanding location and motion.
When People think about augmented reality, the first things which come into their mind is Google Glasses or ARKit, but Bose has changed the statement of AR from only being a visually based platform to that AR can also be based on audio. Instead of a screen displaying information which sometimes can be distracting, audio can be a better job of not distracting the user. This move can be a turning point for Bose as well as the AR industry.
