Oculus headsets have been great for gamers, architects, and engineers. On the other hand, Apple’s Vision Pro hasn’t been very successful. So, are smart glasses any different? Apart from being more user-friendly and affordable, smart glasses truly have great potential for changing the way we work, interact, and do everyday things.
Exploring the use cases for smart glasses:
- Sports and Fitness
While there are several advantages and disadvantages of smart glasses, their sports utility is undeniable. For instance, you’re preparing for a marathon and running laps across the field or challenging yourself with new trails. Looking at the smartwatch to track your vitals isn’t very intuitive during this intense activity. The same holds when you are trying to reach muscle failure at the gym with heavier weights and fewer reps.
The greatest advantage of smart glasses is that they show you all the important metrics in front of your eyes. So, if you are training for a marathon and your heart rate has reached 190 BPM (Beats Per Minute), you can try to optimize your breathing without changing the pace. This helps you to conserve energy to complete the 50K.
On the other hand, when you’re at the gym, smart glasses can show you the proper form for every exercise so that you can execute them flawlessly and recruit more muscle fibres. This can benefit both newbies who lack knowledge and advanced bodybuilders who have a hard time gaining muscle mass with simple routines.
- Taking POV shots and videos
Some smart glasses also have cameras. Yes, the Ray-Ban-Meta smart glass cam isn’t as good as the sensor on your iPhone or Samsung. However, when you look past the minor disadvantages of smart glasses, they aren’t half-bad at clicking amazing images. While they aren’t very good at night clicks, the pictures do come out great when you’re blessed by sunshine.
Moreover, unlike regular phones or cameras, you don’t need to be in an awkward position for POV shots or videos. Taking out your phone and framing it right also takes time. Your travel companions need to wait, and great moments may pass before you capture it on your phone. Smart glasses get rid of those kinks.
- Live captions
Smart glasses from Xander, XRAI, and others provide live captioning features. So, what are live captions? It’s like the auto-generated captions you get on YouTube. Instead of videos, the glasses record, process, and convert data into text and audio captions for the user. While this feature is still in its early stages and nowhere near perfect, it goes to show the immense benefits of smart glasses for travel and people who have visual and hearing impairments.
You won’t have to deal with the language barrier by wearing these glasses while traveling through a different country. Smart glasses can translate whatever locals are saying and put it in front of your eyes or let you hear them in your language. On the other hand, this feature adds working extensions to the missing senses of blind and deaf people.
- Navigation assist
Smart glasses are the most practical tools for navigation assistance. With phones, GPS screens, and other such tools, you constantly need to take your eyes away from the road to check on the route. Smart glasses either beam the information directly into your eyes or act as HUDs (Head Up Displays) that show arrows, direction, and remaining distance.
With further advancements, it may also be able to virtually paint the route in front of you and even show a big arrow or pop-up on the park, building, or any other structure when you arrive at the destination.
- Contextual cues
Imagine speaking to a new colleague or meeting a person for the first time and you get a prompt to save them as a contact on your smart glasses. You’re never put into an awkward situation where you forget someone’s name. Contextual cues can also make shopping easier. Imagine walking into a store, looking at a product, and getting suggestions for the same or similar apparel at a lower price on different sites. That’s when you know you’re living in the future.
Now sunglasses are wearable displays with limited functionality. However, as they get more powerful with better chips, sensors, AI, and augmented reality, they can bring big quality-of-life changes. Are you passionate about technology developments and take a keen interest in how they shape our lives? Write for us in our technology blog and reach out to more tech enthusiasts like you.