Google Announces Augmented Reality Project

Google announced Project Glass, its new augmented reality project, today on the Google+ social network.

Though details are scarce at this point, Google included a promotional video with the announcement demonstrating some of the potential uses for Project Glass. Like many other such projects, the goal of Project Glass is to integrate social media and sharing functions into everyday life with needing to pull out your smartphone, supported by a wide variety of scanning, media, bulletin and other application functions. The potential device in design photos is a nifty little headset reminiscent of nothing so much as Garrus’ visor eyepiece from the Mass Effect series.

Augmented reality is always an ambitious undertaking – so if you ever wanted to live like a video game character with your very own HUD, this would be your best shot. (No word yet on money counters or extra lives, though.)

Google’s official statement read:

We think technology should work for you—to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t.

A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.

Please follow along as we share some of our ideas and stories. We’d love to hear yours, too. What would you like to see from Project Glass?