The Vuzix M100 Smart Glasses are now available for pre-order on Amazon, and they’ll be shipping out to buyers on November 27. This is the “prosumer” model, and the availability is exclusive to Amazon for the time being. With the smartglasses will come an eyeglasses frame designed by Rochester Optical, which will be offering prescription upgrades for buyers who need them through its 13,000+ optical partner locations. Vuzix made the announcement, calling this a “major milestone” for the company.

Many industrial processes will benefit from Augmented Reality once people are familiar with concepts and implementation. This blog post on the EBN portal introduces readers in the field of supply chain management to numerous use cases for AR in supply chain processes and cites the DHL study of AR-enhanced logistics.

In this post on TechCrunch, the Samsung and SAP partnership is dissected. For AREA, the exciting part focuses on enterprise resource planning software. The TechCrunch analyst concludes that this relationship could prove to be a very big deal for both the Internet of Things ecosystem and the broader tech landscape.

This TechCrunch post about Google Glass declining in popularity went viral. It promotes an analysis performed by Reuters documenting the difficulty of even the largest player with the deepest pockets (Google) in gaining traction in a complex segment like hands-free display hardware and software. One wonders when, if ever, the tide will turn for Glass and who else will fail to conquer the consumer hands-free display space.

According to an expert cited in the Medscape article about tumor visualization with Augmented Reality, there is great potential to improve the data that are being received at the point of care. In this study presented by Dr. Segundo Gonzales during the recent American College of Surgeons 2014 Clinical Congress, the suitability of Augmented Reality for superimposing information about the tumor obtained by MRI and other scans is highly promising. Dr. Gonzales is co-founder of Medsights Tech, a company formed to commercialize the software used in this study. Unfortunately, Medsights Tech does not have a web site.

ExxonMobil Research Qatar (EMRQ) has filed five new patent applications in 2014 registering new technology advancements. The research has focused on Augmented Reality training applications and hydrocarbon leak detection to enhance safety and environmental performance associated with liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and transport.

Founded in 2009 to conduct research in areas of common interest to Qatar and ExxonMobil, EMRQ’s recent patent applications are evidence of its dedication to conducting research that enhances technology while ensuring safety is of paramount importance.

“Safety is the main driver for everything we do,” said Jennifer Dupont, research director at ExxonMobil Research Qatar.

She added, “With this commitment at the forefront, we devote our research dollars and efforts to explore ways to enhance and improve safety training in the oil and gas sector in general and specifically with practical applications to the LNG business in Qatar. The five patent applications represent several years of dedicated research towards our collective goals.”

The Augmented Reality Work Aid method provides workers with an enhanced view of a work environment by placing an augmented reality marker close to a component in the work environment.

Mimic Technology announced Maestro AR for Hysterectomy at the Global Congress on Minimally Invasive Gynecology (AAGL). Maestro AR is the first robotic surgery simulation technology that allows trainees to manipulate 3D virtual robotic instruments as a way to interact with 3D video footage of an actual surgical case.

A new report from Juniper Research paints a less-than-rosy outlook for the smart glasses industry, including Google Glass.

The report, Smart Glasses: Consumer, Enterprise and Healthcare Strategies and Forecasts 2014-2019, runs close to 70 pages and concludes that shipments of smart glasses won’t reach 10 million units per year until 2018.

“A combination of lengthy time-to-market and lack of a key consumer use case has resulted in low levels of shipments and adoption in the smart glasses space,” Juniper says in a news release. Also hurting growth of the smart glass space is what Juniper calls the “slow path to social acceptance.”

The report also found that smart glasses continue to raise privacy and safety concerns from many consumers and government bodies. It argued that these need to be addressed or assuaged before the devices become accepted, although prices and their status as supplementary devices mean that smart glasses will remain niche for the medium-term.

While smart glasses may be missing a “key consumer use case,” Juniper believes business uses — particularly in healthcare — will help Google Glass and its competitors start to gain a foothold.

If so, that mirrors the development of the smartphone space. Blackberries and similar devices were popular first in business and industry in the early 2000s, and it wasn’t really until the iPhone launched in 2007 that consumer adoption of smartphones took off. (In fact, it wasn’t really until the second iPhone that this happened.)

Merxius’ Augmented Reality platform, MARMO, is an industrial Augmented Reality framework that aids in machine maintenance and operation. It runs on various devices including tablets and the Google Glass and other head mounted displays. Merxius has been recognized for its innovation and potential to impact future business by being granted the Aegis Graham Bell Award, India’s most important award in field of TIME (Telecom, Internet, Media and Edutainment).

The Augmented Reality-assisted Augmented Immersive Team Trainer (AITT) is making the headlines this week (see post on FierceGovernmentIT blog). The Office of Naval Research has published a press release with details. What’s new? The AITT system, now in its fourth year of development, has gone from working in a fixed position to being mobile. The Navy has also announced that in the program’s next and final phase, the goal is to move from a video see-through display to an optical see-through display. ONR plans to take advantage of Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer efforts in wide field-of-view optical see-through head-worn displays to take Augmented Reality to the next level. The best available head-worn display will be selected in the near future.