Hardware

2. Connected eyewear returns but still has a hard time staying long on consumers faces

What I Thought Would Happen:

2019 will see the return of connected eyewear for consumers. While this next series of “smart glasses” will have a greater focus on fashion, which was said to be Google Glass’ achilles heel, I am not sure that the mainstream is ready for them — yet (on this I hope I am wrong). That being said, I think this next wave will see us getting more right than we have before including the use of digital assistants, a focus on a variety of styles and premium quality materials, and identifying some powerful use cases.

What Really Happened:

2019 did see a push for consumer connected eyewear with Bose, Snap, Nreal, North, and Amazon all making efforts to get smart frames on people’s faces. All of these players have prioritized fashion and wearability with frames that aspire to look like everyday glasses (Snap’s latest Spectacles was even featured in Vogue).

As I suspected this wasn’t the breakout year for consumer smartglasses. I have yet to run into anyone besides me wearing Spectacles or Focals on the street (although I have a couple of friends who swear by the audio AR glasses from Bose).

We did however start to see companies get more right than they have in the past with a focus on integrating with popular digital assistants (North, Amazon and Bose), a glimpse of seeing the world through filters (Snap’s Spectacles Lenses) and the power of a clear, focused and compelling use case (Tilt Five’s AR gaming system). In addition, it has become quite clear that the initial pair of smartglasses will most likely rely on the smartphone rather than replace it, making this device more of an accessory rather than a replacement for now (Nreal).

But most of the activity in the consumer smartglasses space was news and rumors, not launches. Apple dominated the headlines this year with glasses rumors and discoveries for a device that is now expected as early as 2022. Facebook is reportedly working with Ray-Ban on its smartglasses. Pokémon Go creator Niantic announced it is working on AR glasses with Qualcomm’s XR2 platform. And Nreal opened pre-orders for its developer kits and announced its consumer glasses were delayed to 2020.

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3. Context-aware hearables show us AR may be in the ear before our eyes

What I Thought Would Happen:

While most of the attention of the AR industry is focused on putting things in our field of view to augment sight, a more probable AR future to come sooner than this is one based on augmented audio fueled by hearables embodied by digital assistants with some awareness of the environment around it. 2019 will start to see pieces of this future come together.

What Really Happen:

The hearables category did saw a lot of activity this year from big players like Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon. IDC’s September report found the hearables category is now the fastest growing wearable category, “capturing 46.9% of the overall wearables market during the quarter, up from 24.8% a year ago”. And Apple beat its Q4 earnings thanks to its wearable category which was up 54% YOY, to $6.52 billion thanks to a large part to AirPods.

While devices like Apple’s AirPods 2, are much “smarter” than the average earphone, thanks to integrations with digital assistants such as Siri and Alexa, and onboard sensors enabling basic spatial understanding, the hearables category is still in its infancy and has much room to grow into the context-aware platform it needs to be to truly be “audio AR”. That being said, these devices are still a shoo-in to be the first always-on, wearable AR for consumers. Consumers are extremely familiar and comfortable with putting tech in their ear so much so that it has become somewhat of a fashion statement with little to no cultural stigma in wearing them for longer periods of time both in and out of the home and even at work.

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4. Smart speakers demonstrate they are the trojan horse for AR in the home

What I Thought Would Happen:

Portal’s AR effects are just the start for Facebook as they continue to evolve AR functionality on other platforms that can be leveraged for this device. I suspect that we may see AR features launched on the latest generation Echo Show via a 3rd party app. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next version of Google Hub, Apple HomePod and/or Samsung Bixby devices launch with a camera to provide a similar offering. Getting a camera in the home is an important step towards our smart home future and right now Facebook and Amazon are leveraging the smart speaker to do just that. Equipped with a screen, these devices may also soon become home to virtual humans.

What Really Happened:

2019 did see the launch of new camera-enabled smart speakers (also known as smart displays) from Amazon, Line, Google and Facebook. While all facilitate video-calling and integrate with digital assistants, only Facebook and Line boast augmented reality features and neither of these allow third party apps at this time. Apple has yet to debut a smart display version of its HomePod.

With the smart speakers’ global installed base on track to top 200 million by the end of this year according to Canalys, I still believe these devices have the potential to be a trojan horse for AR in the home. But the question is, are people ready for it? As per my original post, just getting cameras in the home is going to be a challenge and Facebook’s Portal sales, as one example, are reportedly very low due to consumers’ privacy concerns.

This year, we did not see a collision of virtual beings and smart displays as I had hoped. We did, however, see Google Assistant updated with the ability to select celebrity voices from the likes of Issa Rae and John Legend, which suggests we are heading in this direction.

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5. Google and Microsoft launch new hardware aimed at winning the next computing war in the enterprise

What I Thought Would Happen:

While it may not be time for smartglasses to be on the faces of consumers, these devices are proving to be valuable tools used at work. This year we expect both Google and Microsoft to launch next generation hardware to grab a piece of the emerging AR enterprise market. But these are not the only devices to keep your eye on this year.

What Really Happened:

One of the biggest milestones for AR this year was most certainly the launch, and most importantly the shipping, of Microsoft HoloLens 2. The lighter, more ergonomic and extremely powerful mixed reality device features new components like the Azure Kinect sensor, an ARM processor, eye-tracking sensors and a new display system. The hardware upgrades along with its integration with Microsoft Azure have most certainly afforded Microsoft to sustain its lead as the immersive computing device in the enterprise.

As part of the HoloLens 2 launch, Microsoft adopted a very similar marketing position for its smartglasses as Google has with Glass (which saw Enterprise Edition 2 launch this year), making it clear that this device is aimed squarely at the enterprise and distancing it from the consumer space. This strategy was later embraced by Magic Leap at the end of this year as the company shifted its focus to the enterprise with the launch of its Enterprise Suite.

But it wasn’t just the big players who released new devices for work this year. ThirdEye, RealWear, and Varjo are just a few of the startups looking to adorn workers with AR headworn devices.

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6. AR plays an important role in the evolution of auto and car makers want to show us how

What I Thought Would Happen:

AR is one of the technologies car manufacturers are looking at to assist with their evolution. While 2019 won’t be when these in-car solutions come to market, it will be another year car manufacturers give us a glimpse into what they are envisioning and preparing to launch.

What Really Happened:

The car most certainly is becoming a hub for AR. While there are already a few examples of basic heads-up displays (HUDs) in cars from BMW, Volvo, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and others, this year we saw a number of automakers show more advanced AR concepts transforming the driving experience.

Nissan’s “Invisible-to-Visible” concept demonstrated how AR and VR technologies could make allow remote friends to virtually drive with you as a passenger, project an image of oncoming vehicles that are hidden beyond a curve, and even project a scene of clear skies on the vehicle windows during poor weather conditions to improve the driving experience. Nissan suggested these types of features will start to emerge in its vehicles “sometime beyond 2025”. Jaguar Land Rover announced it is working on advanced technology to make information appear as though it’s being displayed on the road ahead, as did Hyundai and WayRay. And Volvo and Varjo debuted a mixed reality application for car development with the use of Varjo XR-1.

While we wait for these advanced experiences to arrive, many automakers have already embraced mobile AR as a replacement for the user manual and are are using AR as a powerful sales and marketing tool. They are also equipping mechanics with AR headsets to make them more efficient.

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7. Advancements in senses other than sight begin to make AR more immersive and enable natural interaction

What I Thought Would Happen:

2019 will be a big year for the continued digitization of senses needed for AR to feel more immersive and enable more natural interaction. The three areas I am keeping my eye on this year are spatial audio, haptics and gesture control.

What Really Happened:

2019 was a significant year for the digitization of senses as we saw our hands and body, eyes and ears all being used to make AR more natural and real — but we have so much work to be done to make these experiences truly “immersive”.

Microsoft HoloLens 2 debuted eye tracking, which feels magical when wearing the device. Access to our eyes has countless possibilities within AR (and VR) in furthering human computer interaction but there are ethical implications to consider. AR Pioneer Avi Bar-Zeev underscored these in his must-read article in Vice warning readers that eye tracking will enable companies to collect your intimate and unconscious responses to real-world cues.the implications of giving companies access to our eyes, including reading our emotions and intentions.

Microsoft made major improvement in its hand tracking in HoloLens 2 with its sensors which can now recognize up to 25 points of articulation per hand through the wrist and fingers. Magic Leap also improved its hand tracking with a 15 keypoint model giving Magic Leap One the ability to track a full hand with five fingers. Meanwhile, Facebook acquired CTRL-Labs making this neural interface startup part of its Reality Labs and, while more VR news, also unlocked hand tracking on Oculus Quest.

In mobile AR, we saw the debut of Google’s Project Soli radar system in Pixel phones and the Google AI team unveil an open-source, cross-platform MediaPipe framework to process video on mobile devices to map up to 21 points of the hand and fingers via machine learning models. Apple’s ARKit 3 brought body tracking & people occlusion to the mix. And Snap update its Lens Studio with new templates for hand tracking and body tracking.

Leap Motion, leaders in gesture control, was acquired by Ultrahaptics, leaders in haptics, to form a brand new entity combining the two — Ultraleap. While Emerge came out of stealth and announced funding for its tech aimed at giving AR all the feels.

In spatial audio, Sennheiser acquired AR/VR audio software firm, Dear Reality. And we saw many developers create some of the very first applications for the Bose Audio AR platform including “Traverse” which debuted at SXSW with an Immersive Elvis Experience.

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