Google Glass as a Trailblazer for Modern Wearable Technology

 Background 

  In 2012, Google announced their new wearable piece of technology named Google Glass. Though this project is largely regarded as a failure, as it has since been taken off of the market and its development halted, the computer science behind it is fascinating and could very well have influenced aspects of other (more successful) wearable technologies such as the Apple Watch.

   The basic abilities of Glass included reminding the user of calendar events, giving directions, displaying to the wearer any alert activity on their phone, displaying weather and traffic updates, taking photos, performing Google searches, and lastly allowing video chats via Google Plus. To buffer the argument that this technology paved the way for other wearable successes; 5 out of the 7 basic capabilities listed are implemented on the Apple Watch.

How does it work?

   One of the main control functions of Google Glass was capacitive touch pad. Located on the right side of the wearable, the capacitive touch pad was essentially a weak electrostatic field across the screen. When something makes contact with this field (in this case, a finger), the controller chip detects this change and registers it as a touch. This chip recognizes several different movements or swipes, and interprets that into instructions for the system. For example, a horizontal swipe tells it to display one of the various menus available on the device and a downward swipe will either back out of one of those menus or put the device into sleep mode. This can be thought of as a series of "if" statements, and the resulting action as the following statements in the braces (Ex. If a downward swipe is detected, trigger sleep mode).

Other sensors on the Glass include a bone conduction speaker which sends vibrations through your skull and into your inner ear eliminating the need for ear pieces, a proximity sensor and ambient light sensor that allow the device to detect if it is being worn as well as certain eye movements that can act as commands, and finally an inertial sensor that detects motion such as leaning your head in certain ways which can also act as a command to the device to "wake up".

Google Glass Today

     While the devices are not being sold by Google any longer, many are being sold second-hand on sites such as Amazon and Ebay. Most people have abandoned the expensive accessory, but Google still offers guides for developers looking to create their own Glass content (https://developers.google.com/glass/). On the official Glass site, Google mentions that a future version will be available "when it's ready". While this isn't by any means a formal announcement, it's exciting to look forward to a far more advanced wearable product by this massive company.

Innovation requires failure, and in this case, Google Glass needed to be the failure that led to greater innovation, design, and implementation.



Sources: 
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/other-gadgets/project-glass2.htm
http://tinyurl.com/hs6f55v