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On closer inspection, many of them turned out to be wearing tiny
earpieces that connected wirelessly to their smartphones.
What’s next? Perhaps throngs of people in thick-framed sunglasses
lurching down the streets, cocking and twisting their heads like extras
in a zombie movie.
That’s because later this year, Google
is expected to start selling eyeglasses that will project information,
entertainment and, this being a Google product, advertisements onto the
lenses. The glasses are not being designed to be worn constantly —
although Google engineers expect some users will wear them a lot — but
will be more like smartphones, used when needed, with the lenses serving
as a kind of see-through computer monitor.
“It will look very strange to onlookers when people are wearing these
glasses,” said William Brinkman, graduate director of the computer
science and software engineering department at Miami University in
Oxford, Ohio. “You obviously won’t see what they can from the behind the
glasses. As a result, you will see bizarre body language as people duck
or dodge around virtual things.”
Mr. Brinkman, whose work focuses on augmented reality or the projection
of a layer of information over physical objects, said his students had
experimented on their own with virtual games and obstacle courses. “It
looks really weird to outsiders when you watch people navigate these
spaces,” he said.
They have not seen the Google glasses. Few people have, because they are being built in the Google X
offices, a secretive laboratory near Google’s main Mountain View,
Calif., campus where engineers and scientists are also working on robots
and space elevators.
The glasses will use the same Android
software that powers Android smartphones and tablets. Like smartphones
and tablets, the glasses will be equipped with GPS and motion sensors.
They will also contain a camera and audio inputs and outputs.
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