Brilliant Labs, the startup behind the Monocle open-source AR device, have announced their new product: Frame. This new pair of AR glasses is touted as being the world’s first glasses with an integrated multimodal AI assistant. The latter, named Noa, can undertake actions such as real-world visual processing, novel image generation, and real-time speech recognition and translation. For example, you could look at a video game review and request Noa to summarise the main takeaways as bullet points.

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Brilliant Labs is bringing its open-source ethos back with its next-gen AR glasses. Like with the Monocle, the company will support hardware and software developers and tinkerers of the Frame with full resources including living documentation, open source codebase and hardware schematics. Developers will further be able to modify the parameters of Noa’s supported AI models.

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While the Frame includes a single display like the Monocle and is open-source like the latter, this next-gen model differs in several aspects such as:

• Featherwear AI Glasses - Manufactured using engineering-grade nylon plastic, Frame is optimized for comfort and and weighs only 39 grams, making the device no heavier than a standard pair of eyeglasses but durable and comfortable enough to be worn all-day, every day
• Vivid Display - Frame’s high resolution vivid display boasts 3000 nits of brightness
• Front-Facing Spatial Camera - Frame integrates a low-power machine vision camera that accurately captures and interprets the world around you
• Integrated Microphone - Control or speak with your AI assistant through voice inputs for a hands-free experience
• Multimodal AI - Wirelessly connects to your phone through Bluetooth 5 to support simultaneous generative AI inputs from Perplexity, Stability AI, GPT4, and Whisper to offer advanced solutions to real-world problems
• 6DoF IMU - Centrally located within the nose bridge, an advanced 6-axis IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) provides Frame with a three acceleration axis and three compass axis, which can be used for menu navigation, step counting, directions and more
• Custom Prescription Optics - Prescription lenses, in partnership with AddOptics, can be ‘Precision Bonded’ to Frame using a unique optical lens casting process

Brilliant Labs has also announced a partnership with Perplexity to provide real-time access to the most recent web data through voice queries via the Frame.

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Frame is available for pre-order as of today, retailing for US$349 (including tax), and will begin shipping in April.

SOURCE: GBAtemp Inbox

 

[KingVamp]

The way they charge it, is pretty funny. It is unfortunate that it is only one display.

 

[orangy57]

it'd be cooler if they weren't shaped like the most japanese looking glasses of all time

 

[GoldenBullet]

I judge AR glasses by the amount of real world photos with people wearing the glasses on their product page and this one has none. If you are going to make tech that also doubles as a fashion piece, at least prove that it actually looks good on people. Thats why the Meta Ray Bans are popular

Also, it has all these sensors but show no real features that make use of them. I get that its supposed to be an open source product but they aren't really selling this product all that well

 

[Bladexdsl]

were they designed for these guys?!

 

[Shubshub]

Always happy to see more AR Glasses, Dont care what it looks like right now
This is the period of rapid innovation, Remember when smartphones were coming out every other week with varying shapes and designs before we finally settled into the Final Frontier of touch based smartphones, Thats the period we are in now, Rapid Innovation, Lots of Failure, Lots of Silliness

And eventually it'll be perfected, I cant wait till we get a pair of glasses with a similar form factor with the capabilities of todays Quest devices

 

[Asia81]

Didn't they learn from google?

 

[TheZander]

I don't understand how there is always such a huge consumer market for people who like to walk around and learn about buildings

 

[KingVamp]

I don't care about the looks. Unless you are a developer, you should be waiting for products made from this.

 

[Prans]

post updated to include a new video showcasing the Frame in use

 

[_Snow_]

This tech mostly doesn't appeal to me. Probably because I'm a dinosaur and still remember what mammoth meat tasted like. (Big and stinky beasts). Since the Apple ski goggles got released, I haven't seen many users yet. Of course, very expensive. I've seen what this tech can do, but how useful is it really? When it comes to gaming, digital productivity - sending emails or typing out manifestos of evil, or watching tv/movies, I've already got several screens for that. I don't need virtual floating ones in front of me. One might say, it's nice to have multiple screens everywhere as you can see more at once - but in reality, you can really focus on one screen at a time, so tabs were the best invention for that. There are some neat things that can be done with AR. You could super impose a sketch on a canvas in front of you and make your sketch for a painting. You could super impose a painting, and then match colours and try to match what you see. This would have uses with sculpting as well I imagine. I've seen uses in industry where you can go into an empty room, and virtually fill it with furniture. You can test furniture to see what fits with your room and so it helps with your purchase decision. Both of those uses of AR can be done on a smartphone nowadays. For me I feel AR glasses or ski goggles would be more distracting as you are walking around and looking where you are going as well as looking at whatever if floating in space in front of you. And never mind the useless morons who decide to wear the ski goggles and fiddle with virtual screens while driving an actual vehicle. The one application I could really see AR glasses or goggles be fun as hell to use is playing a multiplayer shooter game in some abandoned building with other people. You could play Quake 3 (without the insane jumping), where you have powerups and ammo floating at certain areas in building. I really wonder how much this tech will be adopted in the future.

 

[Metoroid0]

i just wish VR, AR dies already.....

 

[Marc_LFD]

Is that gonna be compatible with the Fatal Frame games?

 

[Bladexdsl]

is that all it does show scrolling text in your glasses?

 

[HarveyHouston]

Single display? Front-facing cameras? This is that stupid Google Glass all over again! How can anyone support a device like this?

 

[K3Nv2]

Single display? Front-facing cameras? This is that stupid Google Glass all over again! How can anyone support a device like this?

Google glass was way ahead of its time and people weren't e willing to pay it, they weren't willing to pay thousands of dollars for a limited production line at the time with little features locked down to it.

 

[HarveyHouston]

Google glass was way ahead of its time and people weren't e willing to pay it, they weren't willing to pay thousands of dollars for a limited production line at the time with little features locked down to it.

You do realize that Google Glass was also panned for it's privacy issues? https://www.wired.com/story/google-glass-reasonable-expectation-of-privacy/

 

[K3Nv2]

You do realize that Google Glass was also panned for it's privacy issues? https://www.wired.com/story/google-glass-reasonable-expectation-of-privacy/

You mean like every internet device ever invented?

 

[HarveyHouston]

You mean like every internet device ever invented?

TL;DR - the article I linked to suggested that it was the fact that it was always on your face, and could potentially be recording without someone's knowledge, that was the issue.

Yes, IoT devices are always insecure; not one device connected to the net is 100% safe. However, with Google Glass (and potentially Frame), there were major concerns over the built-in camera.