Google Glass Reborn as Industrial Wearable Tech

After being pulled from the consumer market in February 2015, Google Glass this week announced that it has quietly repositioned its smart glasses as Glass Enterprise Edition—”a hands-free device for hands-on workers.”

The evolution of Google Glass—from a consumer-focused wearable tech play with a smart heads-up display and camera to a B2B product—is a tale of digital agility, an accelerated market and the aspiration that smarter tech will bring change for the better.

Since shifting focus to the B2B market, Alphabet has been testing Glass wearable tech for industrial usage at a handful of U.S. factories including Boeing, GE and DHL, as first reported by NPR in March and covered in a lengthy article at Wired.

"For 2 yrs, Glass EE has been quietly in use in workplaces, slipping under the radar of gadget bloggers" @upskillio https://t.co/CIOn8gAnbe

— daynagrayson (@daynagrayson) July 18, 2017

Glass EE uses the same headset seen in an FCC filing in 2015 and again last summer offered up on eBay.

But as The Verge notes, “the major upgrades between the original Glass and the enterprise version are a better camera (with resolution upgraded from 5 megapixels to 8), extended battery life, faster Wi-Fi and processor and a new red light that turns on when recording video. The electronics of Glass have also been made modular in the shape of a so-called Glass Pod, which can be detached and reattached to any frame, including safety goggles and prescription glasses.”

Wired reports Glass EE rollout is modest, in the hundreds and mostly being tested on a trial basis. Alphabet’s Project lead Jay Kothari said “This isn’t an experiment. It was an experiment three years ago. Now we are in full-on production with our customers and with our partners.”

The Mountain View, CA-based tech giant announced Glass EE on the website of X, Google’s moonshot factory, and just lifted its non-disclosure on its Glass EE partners while opening the program for more businesses to participate.

The enterprise version of Glass has been tested in a limited version by several brands including AGCO, GE, Samsung, Sutter Health, Volkswagen and DHL, which is rolling out a test in 2000 warehouses globally.

GE reports a 46 percent decrease in the time from a warehouse picker using the product and GE’s Aviation Division used EE with a Wi-Fi-enabled torque wrench to assist workers on using the proper amount of torque. Eighty-five percent of the workers agreed the system would reduce mistakes.

Kothari writes, “Workers in many fields, like manufacturing, logistics, field services, and healthcare find it useful to consult a wearable device for information and other resources while their hands are busy.”

As Wired surmises, “Factories and warehouses will be Glass’s path to redemption.” Reports on usage are favorable, with Glass EE delivering assistive information on the work floor and increasing productivity.

Still, “We’re not going to prejudge exactly what that path is,” said Astro Teller, who heads up Alphabet’s experimental X division. “We’ll focus on the places that are actually getting value out of that and go through the journey with them, being open-minded about where it’s going to go.”

Teller admits, “Where we got a little off track was trying to jump all the way to the consumer applications. We got more than a little off track.”

A recent Forrester Research report predicts that nearly 14.4 million workers in the U.S. will use smart glasses by 2025.

Google’s attempt to woo consumers to Glass included a skydiving demo at Google I/O in June 2012 and partnering with fashion designer Diane von Furstenburg, whose Sept. 2012 S/S ’13 New York Fashion Week show put the specs on models.

In April 2014, Google launched “Glass at Work” and during a visit to Boeing a few X staffers saw Glass being tested, as Wired notes. “They reported that their minds were blown by a side-by-side comparison of workers doing intricate wire-framing work with Glass’s help. It was like the difference between putting together Ikea furniture with those cryptic instructions somewhere across the room and doing it with real-time guidance from someone who’d constructed a million Billys and Poängs.”

Wired’s theory for why Glass EE is working in private settings after failing in the public sector: “Perhaps because in the enterprise world, Glass is not an outgrowth of the intrusive and distracting smart phone, but a tool for getting work done and nothing else. The Enterprise Edition runs only the single application necessary to do the job. There’s no Facebooking, Tweeting, Snapping, notifications or rage-generating headlines.”

There is, however, always a wag willing to imagine applications:

The Google Glass Comeback looks really familiar. pic.twitter.com/7olVex736u

— Funny Or Die (@funnyordie) July 20, 2017

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