Oakley: 'smart' sunglasses ready to shine
Shade us the way
Sunglasses manufacturer Oakley reckons the time is ripe for 'smart glasses', and has revealed its own R&D efforts in specs technology, which could see it compete with Google's Project Glass in the not-too-distant future.
"As an organisation, we’ve been chasing this beast since 1997,” said Oakley CEO Colin Baden in an interview with Bloomberg.
"Ultimately, everything happens through your eyes, and the closer we can bring it to your eyes, the quicker the consumer is going to adopt the platform.”
The company has done a lot of work on heads-up displays, amassing 600 patents, many related to optical specifications. Baden said it may decide to license these patents going forward as well.
While exact details on Oakley's product plans for smart specs remain hazy, Baden talked up deployment in either military situations, or the "competitive field of sports" and said the world was ready for such technology.
Thump it up
Any product should function independently, although may connect to a smartphone through Bluetooth too and feature Siri-like voice commands, said the honcho.
The company is no stranger to sunnies with a technical twist. In 2004, it released a pair of glasses with an in-built MP3 player, the Oakley Thump, as seen above.
But Oakleys with a built-in HUD? Now that's something I'd like to see. My wallet on the other hand will probably object. ®
COMMENTS
The frames!!
You aim for retro, push for art-deco, then overshoot to fugly.
Why does it have an earpiece if "everything happens through your eyes"?
Don't forget
- Remote control so that kids in Russia can force hipsters in Hoxton to walk straight into lamp posts
Re: The frames!!
I think those pictured are actually the old ones with the built in mp3 player.
Sir
Oakleys may be expensive, but in my opinion they are worth it.
Some years back they pioneered a wrap-around focal lens which was photo-reactive and anti-glare etc. which was perfect for keeping peripheral vision in focus when riding my motorbike.
This would have been enough, but they saved my eyesight from a falling rake that fell out of the garden shed (say around 2 feet of movement at the rake-head to give you some idea of the forces involved).
A rake point hit me in the eye and would almost certainly have blinded me had I not been wearing them. The damage to the lens? A small scratch about 6 mm long and they are still being used right now. (They cost me £300 in 2006)
If they make a HUD that has the same kind of lens, then I'm buying.
