Providers of hands-free personal displays are constrained by the fact that there are relatively few developers that have the skills to develop new Augmented Reality-assisted services and software. Building a new ecosystem of developers is costly and can be slow when the number of users is small. One of the strategies to remove barriers for developers is to supply a run-time app delivery environment that will be easy for users of either Android or iOS to use the M100. In the press release issued by Vuzix, the company announces that Smart Glass Manager for M100 now runs on both Android and iOS mobile devices.

The SGM application runs on the smartphone and helps the user access M100 features, enabling a seamless connection to other local applications and services. With M100 and the SGM manager application on the smartphone, users can launch and control any M100 application, permitting access to the M100 camera for applications such as sharing pictures. The user can also view M100 settings and configure wireless network connections.

Epson has announced that it plans to release a professional model of smart glasses to the family of Moverio products. In a press release issued by Epson the company described new features of the Moverio Pro BT-2000. The most significant of the new features is the 3D depth sensing. The new model will be able to detect the dimensions and spatial positioning of objects in relation to each other.

In addition, a more sensitive Epson inertial measurement unit means that the system will more accurately track head or indoor positioning. Finally, the display resolution has improved to 1350cd/m2.

The release states that the Moverio Pro BT-2000 will be available in selected markets in EMEA, Japan and the United States in the autumn of 2015.

It was certainly discussed in their respective board rooms for many months, if not years, before Intel and smart glasses maker, Recon Instruments, formally announced the acquisition of the small Vancouver-based smart glasses maker by the semiconductor giant this week. The fact that Intel Capital invested in Recon Instruments in 2013 certainly could not have hurt.

Questions about how this change in status will impact the Recon’s products remain. Will the emphasis continue to be on smart glasses for sports?

Dan Eisenhardt, Recon’s co-founder and CEO, says he’s confident that the focus will not change and goes on to explain in his blog post on the Recon Instruments site that he feels the Recon product roadmap and potential for impact increase as a result of greater access to Intel’s developer ecosystem and other assets in Intel’s core technology portfolio.

The other question is who’s next?

Augmented Reality has long been proposed as a way to reduce costs and improve the quality of care and patient outcomes in healthcare. Some companies are introducing services and solutions that support medical training and education and even to deliver care differently. In this article on the Tech Republic web site, the author summarizes six talks that were presented as part of the Augmented World Expo (AWE) 2015. Speakers included physicians, academic researchers and providers of commercial solutions.

By showing the range of possibilities this article helps practitioners and those new to Augmented Reality better appreciate the potential benefits.

Kopin has announced in a press release that it will provide the display technology to an un-named integration company for the production of Augmented Reality-enabled helmets. The helmets, according to the press release, are designed for use by pilots that need to be able to see content in line of sight and in color even in bright environments. These are challenging requirements but shared by many companies with deskless workers in utilities, agriculture, logistics and other industries. It will be interesting to see the results of this integration. 

Past announcements about a partnership between Vuzix and Pristine, a software provider for remote assistance with smart glasses, foretold of exciting new services for the users of the M100. In the press release Vuzix issued such a service comes to light. The HP Visual Remote Guidance (VRG) service offers remote hands-free collaboration between a customer with a need or problem, and an expert providing the solution via detailed audio/video guidance. HP spokespeople suggest that VRG will reduce both the time and cost to resolve issues. 

The suspense in the market was palpable in the days leading up to the short post published on TechCrunch on Thursday May 28, and although the acquisition is still not confirmed by a press release from either company, many are not surprised to learn of the acquisition of Metaio by Apple Computer. This development in the Augmented Reality ecosystem will be the subject of much analysis before the dust settles. Despite the disruption to those businesses that based their products and services on Metaio technology, the technologies, customers and providers of Augmented Reality-enabled systems continue to evolve at a rapid pace.

Augmented Reality may not be the first tool that comes to mind to assist them but data managers and those who offer solutions to those professionals realize that occasionally one must step into the data center to resolve issues that can’t be addressed remotely in software. And when facing dozens or hundreds of racks that look identical, the technician needs more than a paper map to be sure to address the problem without error. In this analysis of a recently published patent released on the Declassified blog, VMware proposes to use Augmented Reality to visually overlay information that will help technicians find their way around the humming maze of identical-looking racks and cabinets.

What does the minimum viable smart glasses product provide? It needs to detect context and provide useful information without the user needing to divert attention from the object or point of interest. It seems that Microsoft is eager to define the features of a product far in advance of what is possible today. This week the demonstrations of 3D holographic figures visualized using HoloLens were unveiled during the LDV Vision Summit, an event about image-processing technology, in New York. A feature article on the MIT Technology Review web site reports that subjects are filmed using a 3D holographic studio Microsoft has designed for the purpose and can be projected performing activities in users field of view. The article describes how it could be valuable for sports and entertainment but there are also many potential uses in enterprise and industrial settings.

This article on the CIO magazine web site describes how a “smart vest” communicating with smart glasses can help keep employees safer in a dangerous environment. The proposed technology, involving sensors embedded in a garment worn on the job, would alert people about moving machines, detection of toxic chemicals and other changing conditions that could be harmful. The use cases suggest that people would also be able to learn of the danger and how to avoid it using smart glasses communicating with the cloud and IoT-assisted systems.