Facebook is launching smart glasses in 2021, its next step to an AR device

At the fittingly virtual event, Facebook announced that some employees would soon will be testing Project Aria glasses to help the company figure out what needs to go into AR glasses to make them useful without scaring consumers off.

Mark Zuckerberg also announced that Facebook would launch the next step on the road to augmented reality glasses next year, some kind of smart glasses device that falls short of AR capability.

The company provided little detail on what capabilities the glasses would and would not have, though weve asked for more information.

Zuckerberg suggested that the Luxottica partnership would help accommodate an array of styles and preferences that people might have for the devices.

In a produced video that wasnt a demo of the device but was meant to show off relevant research, Facebook depicted some theoretical uses for AR glasses: getting an overlay of street directions, music recommendations in a record store or even visual alert showing you where your lost keys went.

Its own privacy scandals notwithstanding, Facebook seems to keenly recall the rocky early days of Google Glass, an ahead-of-its-time product with a launch marred by user privacy concerns over the devices built-in camera.

Andrew Bosworth, Head of Facebook Reality Labs, was quick to emphasize that Facebook will undergo extensive testing well before any consumer device would go on sale. Those testers will help Facebook understand things it cant figure out in the lab, like what sensors need to go into the hardware and what kind of data the glasses should and shouldnt collect.

Original article