Intel Is Giving Up On Its Smart Glasses (theverge.com)

Intel is planning to shut down the New Devices Group (NDG), and cease development on the Vaunt smart glasses project that was revealed earlier this year. The glasses are unique in that they use retinal projection to put a display in your eyeball. "There is no camera to creep people out, no button to push, no gesture area to swipe, no glowing LCD screen, no weird arm floating in front of the lens, no speaker, and no microphone," reports The Verge.

Intel issued a statement announcing the plans: "Intel is continuously working on new technologies and experiences. Not all of these develop into a product we choose to take to market. The Superlight [the codename for Vaunt] project is a great example where Intel developed truly differentiated, consumer augmented reality glasses. We are going to take a disciplined approach as we keep inventing and exploring new technologies, which will sometimes require tough choices when market dynamics don't support further investment." From the report: It was always unclear how precisely Intel intended to bring the Vaunt glasses to market, though sources indicated that Intel wanted to find a partner with retail expertise to partner with. Jerry Bautista, the lead for Vaunt, told me back in December that Intel was "working with key ecosystem hardware providers -- whether they're frames or lenses and things like that. Because we believe there's a whole channel to people who wear glasses that's already there." The story was first reported by The Information.

Comments

Because they are stupid?

[pablo_max]

I wonder if it's because smart glasses are a creepy, stupid and anti-social idea that only a very small niche of people are willing to actually pay money for?

Re:Because they are stupid?

[drinkypoo]

I wonder if it's because smart glasses are a creepy, stupid and anti-social idea that only a very small niche of people are willing to actually pay money for?

There are lots of applications for smart glasses in business which are not at all creepy. The question is whether people want to buy products from Intel at a price that will produce a profit margin that makes Intel happy.

Re: Because they are stupid?

[iggymanz]

Take video of people with your cell phone the next time you're on a major USA city's transit system. They will beat the shit out of you for being creepy; those glasses are the same.

Re:Not surprised

[hey!]

The thing is all the obvious applications for smart glasses that are useful to you as a user are task oriented. Driving directions, for example. If you could get the price, styling, and performance of these things in the right place, they'd have niche applications.

But that's not the vision, is it? The vision is for you to have these things on your face every waking moment, so that the vendor can track and shape your behavior as a consumer.

That's easy with something like a smart speaker (which would be more accurately called a "smart microphone") that you buy and stick in the corner of a room. It's not so easy with something you have to wear, and have to recharge the more you use it.

Missed opportunity

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Both Intel and Google keep going after the "consumer space" for this, even though they have been shown repeatedly that the general public is just not wanting this. There IS a large market that could utilize augmented reality vision, which is various manufacturing, inspection, utilities, etc; basically any place that needs to apply diagrams out of a manual to real-world situations.

I could see, for example, smart glasses working with airline mechanics, bringing up the various specifications that need to be followed, the glasses scanning whole sections of aircraft making sure nothing is out of place. A system like this could even incorporate risk management; if X number of parts are showing the same Y issue, notify a safety team to a potential larger problem and have a larger inspection done.

Paramedics could use this in conjunction with emergency rooms; imagine an ER being able to remotely guide an EMT to look at specific injuries while en-route, use that information to prep an OR before they even arrive. Nurses in the ER could also use them on injuries, allowing doctors to better queue and prep for incoming patients. Calling in a "specialist" would be far easier, as the specialist could guide a surgeon remotely; especially if the smart glasses had dual cameras that fed into another smart glass the specialist was wearing enabling stereoscopic vision.

Complex manufacturing could use them too; seeing what electronics need to connect where, what bolts need to be tightened to what specifications. They could even be paired up with specialist tools that measured voltage, torque, etc that feeds back into a larger database. Such a system could send out automatic maintenance requests if later it was found that some bolt on some aircraft needed to be a X torque but was done Y instead; or type X fuse was used but a safety report shows that Y should have been used instead; or even that X IC was installed on a flight circuit board but they all need to be replaced with type Y instead.

For those saying these don't solve a problem

[Solandri]

Yes they do. Cell phones have become bigger because people want a bigger display, but have bumped into the size limit of pocketability. The obvious solution is some sort of portable display technology, which would allow the processing bits of your mobile computer (your smartphone) to remain small enough to fit in your pocket, without sacrificing screen size. The pressure to increase smartphone screen size is so great that manufacturers have been clamoring to eliminate bezels, and use dead space to display additional info.

The advantage of putting the display in glasses is that it's not really the physical screen size which matters. It's the apparent screen size - a combination of physical size and viewing distance. By putting the display right next to the eye, you can create a display with a massive apparent size even though its physical size is tiny. You avoid the drawbacks of a large physical screen size (loss of portability, easier to break, greater battery consumption).

The only solutions I've seen to this problem are a foldable/rollable display, a projection display, or a display mounted close to your eye via glasses.

Steve Mann's old method

[JasonNolan]

I thought Steve's method was a great one, and Intel's is either built on it or came from a similar path. What was useful was the application for people with visual challenges like macular degeneration or retinitus pigmentosa, because, in a sense if you beamed the image onto the parts of the retina that still functioned, the brain could form the entire image... and I've seen some research to support this. I've got some photos from 2004 when I took a friend, who has RP, to see steve and try it out. I hope that at some point this method can be brought into use for individuals with vision challenges. Images here: http://lemmingworks.org/aruney... if anyone's interested.