Google Releases Project Glass Images

Google has officially released photos and a video taken with its Project Glass prototype spectacles, which give people an idea of what it would look like reading a newspaper, taking photos of children or taking shelter under an umbrella in the rain.

Project Glass is an experimental set of glasses that can capture video, take photos and provide the wearer with a web-connected heads-up display (HUD).

Backflips

Google’s 15-second 720p video also shows the first-person perspective of someone doing backflips on a trampoline, an effective, if nausea-inducing example of how the video-capture technology works.

“Since we started testing Project Glass in public, our team members have been taking a lot of pictures. We selected some of them to show you what kinds of moments we’ve managed to capture,” Project Glass tech lead Max Braun wrote in a blog post on the company’s Google+ site. “When our team started using Project Glass test devices at home, we saw a different kind of family photo. These are the precious moments you want to savour and capture at the same time.”

In April, a two-and-a-half minute promotional video the Project Glass team posted on YouTube, which takes viewers on a tour of a user’s daily routine as he makes breakfast, video chats with his girlfriend and travels around New York City, gives an impression of what the technology is capable of. Photos on the project’s Google+ page also show what the final creation – a sleek, white, paper-thin frame – could look like.

However, Google has admitted that some of the more advanced features, like the sleek graphical user interface used in the promotional video, won’t be available in the first iteration of the glasses.

According to a report in DigitalTrends, Google will be working on an alert system for hearing-impaired users of the glasses, which would send the wearer a text message when a speeding car (for example) was a approaching.

Alerts

The report cited a patent Google filed with the United States Patent Office, which in the filing described the technology as “displaying sound indications on a wearable computing system” that indicate the direction of a source of sound and the intensity level of the sound are disclosed.

“A method may involve receiving audio data corresponding to sound detected by a wearable computing system. Further, the method may involve analysing the audio data to determine both a direction from the wearable computing system of a source of the sound and an intensity level of the sound,” the filing abstract explained. “Still further, the method may involve causing the wearable computing system to display one or more indications that indicate the direction of the source of the sound and the intensity level of the sound.”

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