Since Google kicked off the AR glasses boom in 2010, new products have appeared regularly worldwide. ‘From Xiaomi’s smart glasses exploration edition in September to Microsoft’s HoloLens 2, imaging and audio-visual interaction keep enriching while lens thickness, shape and weight approach ordinary glasses,’ said Li Haifeng, professor at Zhejiang University’s College of Optical Science and Engineering. AR glasses are heading for the consumer market – and may change how people work, learn and live.
Blending virtual and real
Unlike VR headsets, which seal users in a closed virtual environment and cut off sight and sound from the outside, AR glasses overlay digital images on the real environment. Both put a projector in the frame and use the lens as a screen, but AR drops the dependence on electronic displays and interacts with reality far more directly.
In film terms: the VR hero of Ready Player One fights through a fully virtual game world, while Iron Man fights through a heads-up display that layers information onto reality. With AR glasses, calls, navigation and translation from the phone can interact with the real scene on transparent lenses – the phone screen’s functions move to the lens, with little sense of separation from the surroundings.
Consumer-grade AR demands optimised imaging plus size and weight – functionality and portability together – and the technical paths are maturing. Per the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology’s virtual and augmented reality white paper, optical waveguides – the medium devices that guide light waves – look closest to everyday glasses, and enlarging the eye box fits more face shapes, a significant upgrade path for consumer AR.
‘Shopping online, remote classes, near-eye video conversations – all through AR glasses one day,’ Li said. Consumer AR glasses are called the information age’s last screen: their arrival may finally free people from displays.
From special scenes to everyday wear
Technical difficulty and production processes once confined AR glasses to enterprises – exhibitions, industrial production, corporate security. As technology breaks through, consumer-grade glasses for cycling, swimming and other sports have appeared: wearers see their stats heads-up without glancing at a phone or watch.
Hangzhou Lightforce Technology’s AR holographic swimming goggles illustrate the point: the company’s self-developed holographic resin waveguide uses advanced volume holographic grating technology, improved substantially in materials, grating design algorithms and optical simulation after earlier limits on field of view, light efficiency and clarity, said founder and CEO Zhang Zhuopeng.
The white paper notes that Microsoft and other AR leaders have adopted surface relief diffractive waveguides – a waveguide branch – and achieved mass production, proving the route works. ‘In the metaverse’s magic cube, you need a suitable mobile terminal carrier, and AR glasses are an excellent candidate,’ said Weng Jiyi, founding partner of Ivy Capital: heads-up content on a bigger display than a smartwatch, with stronger interaction – eventually a replacement for the phone in work and life.
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