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Home Electronics: Technology, News & Trends Meta’s First AR Glasses, Orion, Are Released!

Meta’s First AR Glasses, Orion, Are Released!

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Orion 5

On September 25, at the Meta Connect 2024 conference, Meta CEO Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg) officially released Meta is a prototype AR glasses Orion, costing up to $10,000 USD. However, this product is more of a technical exploration, and will not be mass production, the follow-up Meta will launch a lower cost production version.

Specifically, Orion’s uses a split design, whereby the glasses themselves act primarily as a display component, while the computing component is placed in a separate box, which has the advantage of dramatically diminishing the weight and thickness of the AR glasses to a design that can approach near-vision, while manipulation is left to another detached component, the -Meta’s own myoelectric ring. Furthermore, the data transfer seems to be done wirelessly, which solves the problem of interfering with control by connecting wires. Next, we will introduce each of these three components:

Display parts: Micro LED + Silicon Carbide optical waveguide lenses

Orion’s eyewear part is pretty close from the outside, although the width and thickness of the black frames are still consistent with eyewear. The separation from the computing components, combined with the magnesium alloy (lighter than aluminum) ), also makes the glasses stronger and easier to shorten. Pyramid is the addition of seven miniature telescopes, binoculars and multiple sensors, and the overall weight is only 98 grams, which is heavier than normal glasses to repair, but also far lighter than mixed reality headsets such as MetaQuest or Apple Vision Pro. Therefore, even if users wear it for a long time, it will not bring too much fatigue.

Orion 1

On the display side, Orion has embedded an advanced Micro LED display in the frame and placed the image in the user’s screen through an advanced conductive optical waveguide lens made of Silicon Carbide. Silicon Carbide lenses were chosen over plastic or glass because they are more durable, lighter, and have an ultra-high refractive index, which results in a 70-degree FOV (field of view) that far exceeds that of many common AR eyewear products, meaning Orion’s display attracts a wider field of view for the user.

The Orion’s use of Micro LED displays, which still have low yields, and possibly a three-color-in-one opto-machine solution, coupled with optical waveguide lenses made of Silicon Carbide, which are much more difficult to manufacture, has led to lower yields as well as a significant increase in the cost of the glasses.Speaking about the lenses, Meta’s CTO, Andrew Bosworth, also highlighted that “You can’t imagine the yields being this low.”

Orion 3

Additionally, in the frame trade, Meta has included some custom chips, part of which is supposed to be used to pair with the seven built-in micro-cameras and the initial computation of the associated graphical data, and part of which is supposed to be used for the wireless signaling of the associated data, which is needed to be able to achieve the increased data throughput and reduced latency requirements.

Computing components: may be powered by a custom NVIDIA chip

In terms of standalone components, was installed in a pluggable long box, but Meta found the relevant hardware parameter information. However, this conference Meta invited NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang as a guest on the field debut experience to help, guessing that the computing components trade may use NVIDIA as a meta-customized computing chip.

Orion 4

According to the introduction, all of Orion’s eye tracking, hand tracking, SLAM (simultaneous localization and map building, positioning and map building) and at the same time focusing on AR locking graphics algorithms and other damages will be consumed computing on this computing box.

Myoelectric bracelet

In terms of control, in addition to the seven miniature ring cameras and microphones on the glasses, users can rely on eye tracking, hand tracking, and voice recognition to control the Orion glasses, Meta has equipped Orion with a self-developed myoelectric hand.

According to the latest reports, the myoelectric hand is made of high-performance textile materials and utilizes electromyography (EMG) technology, which can track tiny finger movements through wrist grasping activities. These EMG signals can be converted into units for control signals.

Orion 2

Currently, the myoelectric bracelet can recognize several basic operations: for example, pinching the index finger with the thumb to select content; pinching the middle finger and thumb to call or hide the application launcher; with the thumb in the closed palm to make a coin gesture can be upward or step scrolling. It also incorporates eye-tracking interactions, with eye charging allowing base mouse slider control, and pinching fingers via the motorcycle power ring allowing base clicking.

Meta said the motorcycle hand ring is not limited by the field of view of the glasses camera, the user can slide, click, scroll and other operations in any position.

Conclusion

Orion can be completed to say that it is a real AR glasses, users can not rely on cell phones, only through Orion to a variety of regular applications, such as using WhatsApp or Messenger to send and receive messages, play AR games, voice/video calls and so on. At the same time, Orion also integrates Meta AI assistant, which can help users easily complete a series of functions such as voice, object recognition, booking, navigation and so on. And with Meta’s AI big model capability, Orion is also able to realize real-time AI translation and other functions. Orion users can also easily interconnect with each other. For example, two users wearing Orion can meter by scanning QR codes and then play AR games together.

Although Orion is already a very complete product, due to its excessive cost (reaching $10,000), Meta does not plan to sell it in large-scale mass production, and has only produced 1,000 units, mainly for internal development and external demonstrations. The lenses may not be made of silicon carbide to improve yields and reduce costs.

Rahul Prasad, Orion’s head of product, also said, “Getting a bigger field of view is a scientific problem. The stage is an engineering problem of getting higher resolution, higher brightness and subsequent cost.”

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