Facebook’s Project Aria

Facebook is continuing its push toward delivering AR glasses and it is showing some of its development out in the open. Project Aria is a sensor-rich pair of glasses which the company will use to train its AR perception systems and asses public perception of the technology. Facebook is keenly aware of the backlash that faced Glass, Google’s early attempt at consumer smart glasses. The privacy implications that came with people walking around wearing a camera on their head were not lost on the public, some of which took to calling Glass users ‘Glassholes’. By its nature, AR requires heaps of sensors to work. Cameras facing out to see the world, cameras facing in to see where your eyes are pointed, accelerometers to determine orientation, microphones to hear you speak, and plenty more.

It is like Google Glass times ten. Project Aria is an AR headset prototype that Facebook is using for two things: gathering data for AI training and assessing the public’s perception & concerns of the technology. As far as we know, Aria does not have any displays, but it does have a full suite of the kind of sensors that will be used in a complete AR headset. It is basically a pair of sensor-rich glasses that’s designed to soak up everything that it can see and hear. The data collected will be used to train AR perception systems that will allow AR glasses to understand the world around them to provide useful information to the user. Another goal of Aria is to test the waters with public perception and uncover privacy and ethical obstacles.

More information:

https://www.roadtovr.com/project-aria-facebook-ar-glasses-real-world-testing/