Google Glass development still in progress: project head

Google’s augmented reality project, Google Glass, continues to be one of the most anticipated pieces of tech this year. Babak Parvis, who heads the Google Glass project, recently shed some light on on the wearable augmented reality display in  an interview with IEEE Spectrum. While he did not mention any specific features, Parviz did reveal some of its basic capabilities— you can take pictures and share them. Parviz even added that the feature set of Google Glass had not yet been finalised and that “it is still in flux.”

Still a while to go before we can have people turning into roadkill.

Parviz stated that with the Google Glass, the company was essentially looking at a device capable of doing two things that would be useful to a lot of people. The first would be to develop a device that would allow users to have ‘pictoral communications’, i.e. have users communicate with each other with images and video. “Right now, we don’t have any devices that are specifically engineered to connect to others using images or video. So we wanted to have a device that would see the world through your eyes and allow you to share that view with other people,” he said.

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Parviz stated that they are constantly trying out new ideas as to how users can use their platform. Parviz also mentioned that they were working towards making the hardware and software more robust, so as to be able to ship it to developers early this year. 

Google has been developing the augmented reality wraparound shades for a while now. The runway at Diane von Furstenberg’s Spring/Summer 2013 collection show at New York Fashion Week, recently saw a surprise entrant—Google Glass. Models sashayed down the ramp in their best outfits donning the Glass at the event. Also seen at the event was Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

This electronic eyewear can snap photos, initiate video chats and display directions at the sound of a user’s voice. Images depict that the bands on every headset were made to complement the shades of the outfit showcased by the models. Interestingly, reports also suggest that one model switched on the device’s video-recording function and managed to capture her view of the runway.

Project Glass is an intriguing concept. Google’s fascinating advertorial video for the prototypes was released recently. The idea that we could have mobile technology combined with AR in a lightweight, wearable module piqued the world’s curiosity. 

Recently, there were reports of test results of the Project Glass prototypes. A few photos taken from the device made it to Project Glass’ Google+ page. While some may look a little too perfect, read, digitally cleaned up, others looked very real for a mobile-like camera.