Adoption of Smart Glasses on the Horizon.

• Position: AUGMENTED REALITY

Consumer mass-market augmented reality (AR) products and applications could become the next wave of modern technological progress, following the PC and smartphone in transformative impact on nearly all aspects of life and business. However, making widespread consumer AR a reality will require significant innovations in key areas to reduce size and weight while improving performance, according to an analysis from Lux Research, Boston, Mass.

Among AR hardware components, three that offer the greatest potential for innovations are:

* Optics. Components that display a virtual image focusing either on or near the user's eye(s).

* Sensors. Devices measuring images and distances to surrounding objects are needed for combining the virtual and real worlds.

* Light engines. Key elements in creating an augmented reality experience are light sources and light steering devices that convert image data into a light object that is later focused by optics to be perceived as a virtual image.

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