Smartglasses

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Smart glasses, or smartglasses, are wearable computers and a head-mounted displays that project and overlay digital information onto displayed reality. This information is projected either on a display very close to the user’s eyes or directly onto his retina. The user then sees the virtual elements as if they were an inherent part of displayed reality. The reality is thus mediated, augmented, or altered (Milgram 2007) by the computer generated information without disturbing the user's normal field of vision.

Some models of smart glasses are nothing more than a displaying devices. They had to be connected either with a cable or a wireless connection to the processing unit (e. g. a mobile phone) that prepares the virtual information to be displayed. The latest models are stand-alone computers that can run and install applications just like a normal computer can. The connection to other devices is only required for data storage, sometimes Internet connection, or for any other way of further expanding the features of the smart glasses device.

The big advantage of smart glasses over a smartphone, is for example that the user may control them handsfree. Smart glasses usually offer some kind of gestural interface, speech recognition, eye tracking, or sensors that register the movement of the device on the user’s head, e.g. tilting the device. Most of the devices also feature a manual way of controlling them, such as small joysticks or touchpads. Devices that need to be connected to a processing unit as mentioned above, are controlled through it too. For this, a smartphone is often used. Experiments with brain-computer interface based control (Mann 2014, section 23.2) have also been experimented with, but so far this method is not used in commercial products.