The battle for your face is on!
On Thursday night, Google announced that it is working on a “smart contact lens,” which is meant to be worn by diabetics and which would use small sensors to measure the wearer’s glucose levels.
Google’s Contact — or “EyeGoogle,” as I’m calling it — isn’t the Silicon Valley giant’s first foray into wearable face-computing: Google Glass, the company’s head-mounted smartphone assistant, is slated for a wide release in 2014; nor is Google the only technology company working hard to get you to stick a computer in front of your eyes in the coming years.
Here are the most important companies working on wearable facial computers. If any of these companies have their way, we’ll all have little screens plastered on our noggins by New Year’s 2015. These are the ones you should keep an eye out for.
1. Google
In the past year, Google has certainly established itself as the company people most associate with whimsical, futuristic face computers, with its forthcoming Google Glass and still-several-years-away smart contact lens.
Important to note: Though glasses and contact lenses perform similar functions in normal life, Google Glass and Google Contact Lens do not. Google Glass is what you might consider a more traditional wearable computer (if such a thing exists): It simply performs several of your smartphone’s functions on a small screen in front of your eye — showing you text messages, the time and weather, walking directions — so that you don’t have to pull your phone out of your pocket. Google’s contact lenses, meanwhile, has a more specialized function: Intended for diabetics, it measures your body’s glucose level in the eye so that you wouldn’t have to prick yourself for a blood sample several times per day.
With contact lenses and eyeglasses covered, it’s only a matter of time before Google introduces computerized binoculars, opera glasses and monocles. Stay tuned
2. Oculus VR
For decades now, playing video games at home has usually meant staring at a screen — either several feet away from your eyes, with video game consoles, or about a foot away from your eyes, with computer games.
The Oculus Rift, created by a startup called Oculus VR, is a buzzy new system that brings the screen right up against your face. Still in prototype mode, the Rift itself is a sort of visor that completely blocks out your vision, except for a high-definition screen in front of your eyes that hooks up to a computer game. Your point-of-view is your game character’s point-of-view; and the system also tracks your head movements, so that wherever you look, that’s where your character in the game looks, too. Read More Article>>