Google Glass, Second Act

 

Google Glass has relaunched as Google Glass Enterprise Edition (EE). The evolution of Google Glass, from the unsuccessful commercially targeted smart heads-up display and camera to today’s product, is a tale of digital agility, an accelerated market and the ever-aspiration that smarter tech will bring change for the better.

Glass EE is being tested and deployed in several 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. But 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 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 up the program for more businesses to participate.

The product has been trialed in a limited version by several brands including AGCO, DHL, GE, Samsung, Sutter Health, and Volkswagen.

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.”

Reports on usage are favorable, with Glass EE delivering assistive information on the work floor and increasing productivity.

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

“Factories and warehouses will be Glass’s path to redemption.” (Wired)

Astro Teller, chief of Alphabet’s experimental X division, said, “We’re not going to prejudge exactly what that path is […] 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.” He pauses. “We got more than a little off track.” (Wired).

In April 2014, Google started “Glass at Work” and during a visit to Boeing a few X staffers saw Glass being tested. “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)

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 wifi-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.

DHL is rolling out a test in 2000 warehouses globally.

Wired’s answer 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.”

Google has redirected the Glass lens to an assistive silo where focus and singularity are essential, bringing a clearer, more productive vision to work.

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