Smart glasses: Google wants to take over eye-tracking start-up
Eye tracking – but without a camera. AdHawk Microsystems is working on this. Google now wants to take over the Canadian start-up.
The glasses trace the view of the ice hockey goal.
(Image: Youtube-Video)
Google is working on bringing smart glasses to the market. The company is now said to be interested in a start-up from Canada that has developed a technology that allows eye movements to be tracked more quickly and cost-effectively. According to reports, AdHawk Microsystems is worth 115 million US dollars to Google.
15 million US dollars is said to be linked to the achievement of performance targets. The deal is not yet official, but Bloomberg refers to people familiar with the matter. However, a public announcement is expected to be made this week.
Eye tracking with low latency and gentle on the battery
AdHawk was founded in 2017 and has already developed glasses called MindLink. They allow you to track exactly where your gaze is going. In a video, for example, they show how the technology can track your gaze when you aim for the goal in ice hockey or how a doctor can use the glasses to monitor a patient's eye movements. AdHawk calls it micro-electromechanical eye tracking and says that it requires 1000 times less data than camera-based systems. Latency is extremely low, and battery life is very long.
This is one of the problems with smart glasses — they all have to be recharged relatively quickly. Although Meta's Ray-Ban Glasses last around four hours, they are also connected to the smartphone, which is where most of the requests are processed in the app. Snap's Spectacles are a standalone device and currently last around 45 minutes. They use additional infrared cameras to improve eye tracking.
It is clear that Google is working on glasses. At the in-house Google I/O 2024 trade fair, a video showed someone using glasses to talk to Gemini, Google's AI, about what the person was seeing – Codenamed Project Astra. This real-time video and screen sharing has recently become available for the Gemini app on smartphones. Glasses would therefore be the logical next step.
Meta is also said to have been interested in AdHawk, but no acquisition was made. AdHawk's investors include EssilorLuxottica – the owner of Ray-Ban, with whom Meta cooperates.
Smart glasses wherever you look
OpenAI also has a function for real-time conversations about what you see up its sleeve. It is obvious that the AI company is developing glasses. It is known, for example, that a former head of Meta, who was previously responsible for Orion, has moved to OpenAI. Meta's augmented reality glasses are behind Orion, but they are not yet on the market.
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Jony Ive, former chief designer at Apple, has already stated that he is working with OpenAI to create a device that is “less annoying than the smartphone”. Apple is also rumored to be working on a Ray-Ban meta-competitor.
However, eye tracking is also of interest for larger headsets such as Apple's Vision Pro or Meta's Quest. Google has also joined forces with Samsung and Qualcomm to develop Android XR, an operating system for augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality. At the same time, Samsung has announced VR glasses that will use the operating system – Codenamed Project Moohan.
(emw)