Google brings AR and Lens closer to the future of search
Instead, Google's augmented reality vision this year is a double dose of attention to utility and assistance, as AR comes to Google Search and Google Lens aims to help people read. While it may seem tamer than years past, and it's not as showy as recent Google AR projects involving Marvel and Childish Gambino, Google's trying to be legitimately helpful. After dozens of smartglasses and AR headsets have come and gone, we need real reasons to use this tech. Can Google find a way forward?
"We think, with the technologies coming together in augmented reality in particular, there's this opportunity for Google to be vastly more helpful," saysClay Bavor, vice president of virtual and augmented reality, about the variety of AR updates Google has coming this year. You might also say that Google's laying the groundwork for its next big thing. The company has to become the digital glue for a world of services that don't quite exist yet. For now, that means putting computer vision to work even more, not just on Android, but on iPhones too.
Google Search with AR feels like instant holograms
Google is introducing AR to Search this year, and this is how it works: Compatible Android and iOS devices will see 3D object links in Search, which will bring up 3D models that can then be dropped into the real world at proper scale in AR. Google Search will incorporate 3D files using the glTF format, as opposed to Apple's USDZ format used by ARKit in iOS 12. According to Google, developers will need to add just a few lines of code to make 3D assets appear in Google Search.
Google Lens keeps evolving, starting with dining help
Using Google Lens, meanwhile, already feels like a pair of smartglasses without the glasses. The camera-enabled app can already be used for object recognition, translation, shopping and recognizing the world.
I peek down at a sample menu, and suddenly dishes on the menu are highlighted. They're popular dishes, according to Google Maps restaurant information. Tapping on the menu items brings up photos and review comments on the fly. It almost feels like annotated reality.
Google Lens translation comes to low-end phones
What Google's Bavor and Chennapragada are most excited about, however, is a use for Google Lens that's coming to low-end phones running Android Gosoftware. Instant translation and reading assistance is running on phones that aren't powerful enough for ARCore, leaning instead on cloud services. I snap a photo of a sign, and now the phone is reading what it sees back to me, highlighting each word. A tap, and I can translate it into another language.
'Future form factors'
Bavor admits that Google's in a phase of "deep R&D" towards new technologies beyond phones, but for now, the goal is to solve for uses on the phone first.
See the full story here: https://www.cnet.com/news/google-brings-ar-and-lens-closer-to-the-future-of-search-io/