Is Amazon really making augmented reality glasses?
Is Amazon really making augmented reality glasses?
Job postings reveal that Amazon is building an augmented reality product. But will they be glasses — or something else?
Augmented reality is the future of the human experience. Five years from now, it will be normal for pertinent virtual objects, characters, holographic people and data to appear to us as we move around and observe things in the real world.
That’s why so many companies are working on and investing in augmented reality products, including Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Magic Leap. Snap, Ray-Ban, Vuzix, Bose, Razer and many others.
News hit this week saying that Amazon is hiring to staff a team that will develop an augment reality product. Job listings spotted by Protocol reveal active hiring for researchers, scientists, designers and program and product managers to build what Zuckerberg might call a metaverse product.
Amazon in March opened a new division called Futures Design, which is a lab headed by Kharis O'Connell, a former designer at an AR headset maker called Meta View. O'Connell was involved in the creation of Google’s AR operating system.
It’s impossible to dismiss Amazon as a competitor in the consumer electronics space. While the company has had failures, including the disastrous Fire Phone, it’s also one of the few companies to beat Apple in a major category. Amazon’s Echo home smart speaker shipped in 2014, four years before Apple shipped its HomePod competitor. The company also shipped the first home indoor security drone and the first major home robot, called Astro.
Amazon isn’t effing around, and must be taken seriously when it targets consumer electronics.
In fact, Amazon is already a player in AR. The company offers an AR service called Amazon Augmented Reality, which enables AR experiences when customers point a smartphone running their Amazon AR app on special QR codes printed on Amazon packages.
Amazon’s main app also augments reality — customers can place chairs, tables and couches as virtual objects in their actual homes when viewed through the Amazon app.
The job ads reveal Amazon’s intention to create “XR/AR devices” based on “advanced sensing, display, and machine learning technologies.” Design candidates must be able to "think spatially, with 3D design experience in motion design, animation, AR/VR, games, architecture, or industrial design" to work on "the core system interface along with end-user applications spanning from multi-modal interfaces to 3D AR entertainment experiences.”
One ad says “You will develop an advanced XR research concept into a magical and useful new-to-world consumer product.” (“New-to-world” means means that they intend to build something in a category that has never existed before.) Some listings call it a “smart home" device.
Let’s break down the pieces of this product:
XR/AR (which is curious, because XR includes AR, so why specify AR?)
AR entertainment (they dropped XR when talking about entertainment)
New-to-world, meaning no such product currently exists on the market like it
3D
Multi-model
Operating system
Applications
Smart home device
Amazon’s job ads reveal one important fact: They’re planning something beyond AR glasses.
We know this because they repeatedly mentioned a “new-to-world” device. AR glasses already exist, so mere glasses are not new-to-world. Also: They mentioned a “smart home” product.
Here’s what I think they’re really up to.
Mike’s List of Brilliantly Bad Ideas
1. This creepy doorbell cam keeps an eye on your visitors
A company called Doggole came up with what they call the Smart Eye Doorbell. It's just like a Ring Video Doorbell, but with one difference: It has an "artificial biological eye," "as if it has a soul," according to the company. They also say that the motion of the eye, which tracks people via an infrared sensor is like "seeing inside the visitor’s soul." Um, no. Just no.
2. Here comes the first robot rat
Roboticists at the Beijing Institute of Technology invented a rat robot. Called SQuRo (small-sized Quadruped Robotic Rat), the robotic rodent has rat-like flexibility and agility to crawl through tight spaces in urban environments. It’s designed to help in disaster zones by crawling through pipes and scampering over rubble outfitted with sensors, including cameras. And like the real life New York pizza rat, it can carry relatively heavy objects.
3. Finally, a super-yacht that flies
Billionaires and oligarchs love giant yachts because it’s the best way to maintain freedom of movement and privacy, while also flaunting wealth. Now, a Swiss company called AirYacht has envisioned the ultimate super-yacht — one that floats through the air. Also called AirYacht, this boat-like structure attaches to a Hindenburg-like blimp, becoming its passenger module. But then cables can lower the boat into an ocean or lake, where it becomes a normal super-yacht — or on land, where it becomes a three-story, six-room house. The craft is made eco-friendly, according to the designers, because it has no engine. When it’s in the water or on land, it just sits there. They intend to “ship” this thing in four years.
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