Google may not have hit a home run with consumers for its science-fiction-made-reality Google Glass but the Internet giant is not giving up on it entirely. Google may now be focusing on industrial applications for it.
Google fans may remember that as part of the race to make the most popular smartphone, Google turned its attention to the now-ubiquitous Android platform, which conveniently appeared shortly after Eric Schmidt joined Apple’s board in 2006.
Google began to think of the next category of hardware device to follow the massive success of the smartphone. It decided it would be a headset computer. By 2011, Google had made an 8-lb prototype of what would become Google Glass. By 2013, a developer edition was made available to a few “explorers.” In May 2015, Google Glass was made available to the public. By January 2015, Google had shelved it, but said it was going to continue development.
I think Google Glass was meant to succeed smartphones as the next ubiquitous mobile computing device, which have become a global phenomenon in 2007 since Apple’s introduction of the iPhone. The idea of a headset smartphone makes sense in terms of an evolution from a handheld device. But it didn’t even last one year on the market as it was quickly rejected by consumers. Was it the right idea to soon?
Given the current craze surrounding augmented reality, cogitating about Google Glass seems natural. It’s a pretty amazing piece of hardware engineering, no matter how strongly the public opposed it. After all, it has a heads-up display (HUD), a microphone, a CPU, a battery, a GPS, speakers, a microphone and a projector that overlays digital information onto a user’s view by beaming it through a visual prism that focuses the digital information right onto their retinas.
It actually seems similar to descriptions of the currently fictional augmented reality product from Magic Leap, the “mixed reality” company that Google led a $500-million investment in.
Boeing and Google Glass
Project Juggernaut was a software demo designed for experimental Google Glass use at Boeing. The goal was to use the glasses for harness assembly and this required pulling information from Boeing's databases in real time in order to help with the process. If you aren’t familiar with harness assembly, aircraft like those built at Boeing have multiple miles of cables and wires in them.
Besides optimizing the amount of space needed for all these cables and wires, the risk of an electrical short is greatly reduced as is installation time when using a harness.
But the Google Glass demo couldn’t pull information from Boeing’s databases fast enough to justify use of the devices on the floor.
Boeing wanted a better app, so it put out a proposal. A company called APX Labs, which makes a software platform called Skylight specifically for smart glasses, got wind of Boeing’s proposal. After meeting, the two companies agreed to work together on a better enterprise app for Boeing’s assembly floor technicians.
The Skylight app works by letting Google Glass wearers scan one QR code, which brings up wireless harness software, then scan a second code which projects assembly instructions into the HUD. The app lets users stream video of what they are looking at to other technicians in case there is an issue that they don’t understand. It also has voice commands, which allows technicians to keep their hands free.
Overall, this was just a drop-in-the-bucket pilot program that recently ended. Boeing is interested in the possibilities of using Google Glass and other augmented reality headsets on assembly floors and maybe even on the International Space Station.
There is an enterprise version of Google Glass in the works although Google hasn’t made an official announcement at the time of this writing. Even though the consumer version was not a big hit with consumers, a version of Google Glass intended for business and industry could do much better. Between enterprise Google Glass, rumors of a new mixed-reality headset, Project Daydream (updated Google Cardboard headset similar to Samsung Gear VR), investing in Magic Leap (maybe to create a standard OS for augmented reality and virtual reality headsets), you can be sure that Google is one company that will keep trying.