Beijing, CHINA, September 14 ，2021, hot on the heels of Facebook & Ray-Ban’s Stories camera glasses, Xiaomi announced Xiaomi Smart Glasses – a brand new smart wearable device. Xiaomi Smart Glasses is capable of combining imaging system and sensors into a subtle, ordinary glasses design through MicroLED optical waveguide technology. Weighing a mere 51g, Xiaomi Smart Glasses is able to display messages and notifications, make calls, navigate, capture photos, and translate text right before your eyes.
To match the form of ordinary glasses, subtle challenges on imaging and internal component arrangements must be overcome. Xiaomi Smart Glasses adopts MicroLED imaging technology to lower the design space needed in structural design, as well as the overall weight of the device.
In order to fit the imaging system seamlessly into the frame, MicroLED undoubtedly is the most optimal choice. Like OLEDs, MicroLEDs pixels are individually lit – its emissive property allows for brighter displays and deeper blacks. But MicroLEDs have a higher pixel density and longer lifespan while having a simpler structure. This allows for a more compact display, as well as easier screen integration.
The grating structure etched onto the inner surface of the lens allows light to be refracted in a unique way, directing it safely into the human eye. The refraction process involves bouncing light beams countless times, allowing the human eye to see a complete image, and greatly increasing usability while wearing. All this is done inside a single lens, instead of using complicated multiples lens systems, mirrors, or half mirrors as some other products do. Optical waveguide technology significantly reduces device size and weight, and therefore allows smart glasses to approach the form factor of traditional glasses.
Software is what makes a device useful, and a big problem with AR glasses is that no AR operating system, app store, or app ecosystem exists. Xiaomi showed a whopping five functions in the video: notifications, phone calls, maps, picture-taking, and translation. There was no app store or developer API to speak of. Xiaomi is using a heavily customized version of Android for the OS and the "XiaoAI AI Assistant" for voice command. These are the primary ways of interacting with the glasses.
Like a smartwatch, there are both onboard processing capabilities that allow the glasses to "independently complete functions such as navigation, taking photos, teleprompter, and real-time text and photo translations" and smartphone pairing, for mirroring notifications and making calls.Under the hood, the glasses use a quad-core ARM processor. There's a touchpad on the side, along with three buttons along the bottom edge of the right arm. What looks like a microphone is cleverly hidden in the nose pad.
pad.At present, Foxconn has also been revealed that it is developing Micro LED AR glasses, which is expected to be completed in 2022. The AR glasses are based on the MicroLED Microdipslay developed by the Taiwan Electronics and Optoelectronic System Research Laboratory (EOSRL), and have successfully developed a 5-micron blue Micro LED module and a 2000ppi full-color reality module.
However, Xiaomi has not announced the mass production and commercial timetable and specific price of the smart glasses. It can be seen that the combination of Micro LED and AR/VR glasses may be a new trend.
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