Meta revealed its Orion prototype final yr to indicate the progress it has made towards compact AR glasses. Immediately the corporate talked extra concerning the prototyping course of, particularly relating to the ‘compute puck’ that offloads a lot of the heavy processing into a tool that goes within the person’s pocket.
One of many main causes that in the present day’s XR headsets are so large is as a result of they want room for lots of processing energy, battery quantity, and warmth dissipation. However with Meta and the remainder of the trade aiming to ultimately make all-day wearable AR glasses, measurement turns into a severe problem.
A ‘compute puck’ is a companion machine for AR glasses that strikes among the processing and battery off of the person’s head and right into a pocketable machine.
Meta used the compute puck strategy for its prototype Orion AR glasses. Whereas firms like Magic Leap have used related approaches previously, Orion’s strategy is considerably novel as a result of the compute puck is totally wi-fi. However it didn’t begin out that means.
Immediately Meta revealed extra concerning the prototyping course of for Orion. Within the submit, the corporate says the compute puck was initially envisioned as a tethered, neck-worn machine, codenamed Omega.
However this idea apparently didn’t final very lengthy after the group determined it will minimize the tether and make a pocketable puck that was fully wi-fi.
After changing into untethered, the Orion group realized that it opened new potentialities for what might be accomplished with the machine.
One intelligent concept concerned utilizing the puck as an anchor for content material, comparable to projecting a video name above the puck. Not solely would this function a tangible place for customers to maneuver their content material from one place to a different, it will additionally imply encouraging them to drag the puck out of their pocket, leading to higher efficiency due to improved cooling.
“It’s not like something you’ve ever seen—the machine has the potential to create actually enjoyable and distinctive interactions,” stated Emron Henry, Industrial Designer at Meta. “The person expertise feels a bit like unleashing a genie from a bottle, the place holograms seamlessly emerge from and dissolve again into the machine.”
The group additionally thought of utilizing the puck as a controller, which might be tracked utilizing inside-out monitoring due to on-board cameras.
Ultimately, the model of Orion that has been seen publicly leans away from utilizing the controller as a major a part of the enter modality. As an alternative the glasses use a mix of eye-tracking and neural inputs due to the corporate’s prototype EMG wristband.
However there’s no telling what the ultimate model of Orion will seem like. For the group, this was a priceless time for design exploration.
“We’re defining a class that doesn’t fairly exist but,” notes Henry. “As you’d anticipate with R&D, there have been begins and stops alongside the best way. How will customers anticipate to work together with holograms? Would they like to make use of an AR distant or is hand monitoring, eye gaze, and EMG ample for enter? What feels intuitive, low friction, acquainted, and helpful?
Though Meta says that Orion will ultimately result in its first pair of client AR glasses, for now the corporate has solely a tough concept of when its first AR glasses will launch and what it’ll price.
