Another smart glasses

The post is devoted to the next "smart glasses", these with technology LOE .

After the “corporation of good” began to actively “pedal” this topic, the popularity of the solutions increased dramatically.

In particular, at the latest Consumer Electronics Show 2014 in Vegas, a number of vendors were noted on the topic.
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I want to talk about LUMUS - an Israeli company that has long cooperated with the local Air Force. Business profile - visual and optical technology.

They declared DK-40 they long ago, at CES2012 they talked about the presence of working prototypes. And then, finally, they presented and promised to release LUMUS DK40 Glass for sale in March.



The LUMUS solutions are based on LOE technology ( Light-guide Optical Element ) - a light-transmitting optical element. Its role is played by a lens made by a special technology, which allows you to project a high-resolution image on it, after which, thanks to special edges, it is transmitted to a person at the right angle. Paired with LOE plays an important role Micro-Display POD - microprojector.



This is a fundamental difference from Google Glass, in which the user works with the display “hanging” in front of the eye, while in LUMUS the whole lens acts as a display for a person.

In fact, in comparison with Google Glass, the company offers a device with more augmented reality. Image resolution is 640 × 480 and the guys from LUMUS claim that working with their solution is comparable to viewing the 87-inch picture from 3 meters.



As has already happened in the industry, the glasses are equipped with a 5-megapixel CMOS-sensor, inertial sensor (nine-axis Razor 9DOF), Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n and Bluetooth BLE. According to the manufacturer, the lithium-polymer battery used will provide the gadget with about 4 hours of continuous operation.

The electronic processor is based on the Varisite DART-4460 compact processor module, which has a dual-core 1.5 gigabyte TI OMAP4460 Cortex-A9, with an integrated 2D / 3D graphics accelerator PowerVR SGX540. Its dimensions, about 1.5 × 5 cm, are ideal for such a compact form factor as glasses.



Android is used as an embedded OS, but they are not intended for autonomous work. The application will be controlled from a smartphone or tablet.

Important point

LUMUS has no plans to bring this device to the retail market. The company works with military and industrial customers and wants to more widely promote its LOE technologies into the world. DK , in the name of the device model, is decoded as the Development Kit, but in general they call this device the Wearable Display Development Kit . And the device is intended primarily for developers, so that they understand in practice that they may have more opportunities now. In essence, it is a development platform. The SDK for “quick start” will be included in the package of delivery.

The company hopes in this way to help third-party manufacturers adopt their technology.

LUMUS stated that it would be able to start shipping the DK-40 at the end of the first quarter of this year (unfortunately I could not find at what price). It is focused on OEMs and will initially distribute the solution by private subscription.

Compared to past solutions, such as the DK-32, which were at least slightly more technologically advanced (720p binocular 3D image), the LUMUS DK-40 looks more mass-oriented. According to Juniper Research, by 2018, annual deliveries of smart points will reach 10 million units worldwide and LUMUS hopes to become one of the leading component suppliers in this sector.

More ideas, more technology, higher competition: in the end, we win - users and developers.