According to Bloomberg, popular sunglass manufacturer Oakley, has secretly been working on heads-up display technology for about 15 years and owns 600 patents applying to optical specifications. This news follows the recent announcement by Google that they were venturing into similar heads-up display technology with Project Glass.
In 2004, Oakley made their first leap into smart-sunglgasses with the release of their MP3 player, Thump. While the project was no major success, it was quite profitable for the company. Now they are developing technology that can project information directly onto lenses, directly competing with Google’s recent announcement.
Initially, Oakley would target the sports market with their heads-up display sunglasses or possibly the US military through Eye Safety Systems.
“Obviously, you can think of many applications in the competitive field of sports. That’s the halo point of where we would begin, but certainly you can transcend that into a variety of other applications”.
In the sports realm, their technology could be used for tracking performance metrics. In the military, every gamers fantasy could be fulfilled with a heads-up display combat system.
Competition is good. It’s good for the consumer and good for product development. Let the HUD wars begin.
Source: Bloomberg