#Oppo will launch AR glasses with gesture control in 2021

Oppo has shown off some neat concepts in the past, ranging from a waterfall display to a hidden selfie camera in the screen. Now, the company is set to dwell into another futuristic area: augmented reality glasses.

At it’s Oppo Inno Day conference today, the Chinese tech firm said that its AR glasses will arrive next year. The device will have time-of-flight (ToF) sensors to measure distances and will use simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithms to gauge the area around the person wearing them. 

[Read: Neural’s market outlook for artificial intelligence in 2021 and beyond]

OPPO AR Glass 2021:

? ToF
? SLAM algorithms
〰️ Diffractive optical wave guide technology
? Gesture & voice recognition#OPPOINNODAY20#OPPOARGlass2021 pic.twitter.com/fQ7iNCen3I

— OPPO (@oppo) November 17, 2020

The company claimed that its design allows you to enjoy videos as if you were watching them on a 90-meter screen. Plus, if you connect them to the Oppo Find X2 phone through a USB-C cable, you can get a performance boost and touch/swipe control to navigate through the content. At the moment, it’s not clear how much the glasses can do if they’re not connected to a phone.

Through increased sharpness, brightness and a semi-open rear cavity acoustic design, #OPPOARGlass2021 ‘Birdbath’ optical solution creates a home-theater experience equivalent to watching 90-inch screen from 3 meters away. #OPPOINNODAY20 pic.twitter.com/ubMeZuAdKB

— OPPO (@oppo) November 17, 2020

Oppo claims to map 21 points on your hands so that you can interact with virtual objects and buttons.

Here’s a look at the interface for #OPPOARGlass2021. Would you like to go shopping for furniture using augmented reality? #OPPOINNODAY20 pic.twitter.com/2hm0NhBakD

— Henry Tang (@HenryTangHai) November 17, 2020

All of this looks pretty cool from a demo perspective, but we haven’t seen AR glasses that have got mainstream success. Companies like Google and Intel tried different concepts to make AR glasses appealing. However, they eventually shelved these projects.

Earlier this year, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that Apple might release AR glasses in 2022. So, there’s no surprise that Oppo and others might want to expedite their development and claim the bragging rights of being an “industry leader” in this segment. However, all that talk is fictional till we actually see the device, and consumers across the world get to use it outside demo zones.

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Published November 17, 2020 — 11:01 UTC