Meta Unveils Aria Gen 2 Smart Glasses with Heart Rate Tracking

Meta Unveils Aria Gen 2 Smart Glasses with Advanced Sensing Capabilities

Meta has announced the Aria Gen 2 platform, an updated iteration of its smart glasses designed for research and development. These new glasses build upon the foundation of the original Aria platform, offering enhanced features and capabilities for exploring the future of augmented reality and AI.

Key Features and Upgrades:

Heart Rate Monitoring: The Aria Gen 2 smart glasses are equipped with a photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor embedded in the nose pad, enabling heart rate measurement. This marks a significant advancement, making them the first smart glasses to offer such biosensing functionality.
Advanced Sensor Stack: Meta has significantly upgraded the sensor array on the Aria Gen 2. This includes:
- A regular RGB camera for capturing visual data.
- Eye-tracking cameras to monitor user gaze and interaction.
- Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) cameras with 6 degrees of freedom (DoF) movement support for spatial awareness.
- GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) for location tracking.
- A barometer for pressure sensing.
- A magnetometer for orientation and magnetic field detection.
Enhanced Audio: A contact-based microphone array is integrated into the glasses to isolate the speaker's voice from ambient noise, improving audio clarity for AI processing and communication.
Efficient Power Management: Meta has developed a custom processing assembly to optimize power consumption for the sophisticated sensing hardware, allowing for an unprecedented continuous use of six to eight hours.

Applications and Research:

The Aria Gen 2 platform is not intended for public sale but will be made available to researchers and utilized by Meta's internal teams in Reality Labs and FAIR AI divisions. The data collected from these glasses will contribute to:

Robotics Training: Advancing AI and robotics development, potentially for humanoid robots.
Automotive Applications: Enhancing in-car experiences and safety features.
Med-Tech Tools: Developing assistive technologies for individuals with vision impairments and improving navigation systems.

Context and Related Developments:

The Aria Gen 2 smart glasses share a similar form factor to the Ray-Ban Meta Stories smart glasses but feature bulkier arms to accommodate the advanced sensors. This development aligns with Meta's broader strategy in the metaverse and AI research, including their work on holographic display prototypes (Orion) and advancements in AI models like Llama.

Recent news also highlights Meta's ongoing efforts in smart eyewear, including updates to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses with real-time visual AI and translation capabilities, and the potential for future VR headsets like the Quest 4 and Quest Pro 2.

Author and Digital Trends:

This article was written by Nadeem Sarwar, a tech and science journalist for Digital Trends. Digital Trends provides the latest tech news, product reviews, and insights.