Meta showcases the Aria Gen 2 smart glasses featuring heart rate monitoring capabilities.

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      Meta

      A few months prior, Meta unveiled Orion, a pair of smart glasses featuring advanced holographic display technology. Although those glasses are still a few years away, Meta has now launched the Aria Gen 2 platform.

      Resembling the Ray-Ban Meta Stories smart glasses but with larger arms, the next-generation Aria smart glasses boast several significant upgrades. One notable feature is the integration of a photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor that measures heart rate.

      The PPG sensor is located in the nose pad of the smart glasses, making them the first smart glasses to offer this biosensing capability, although not the only devices within the wearable market. Apple's newly released Beats PowerBeats Pro 2 earbuds also include a heart rate sensor.

      Consider them as Ray-Ban Stories enhanced with numerous built-in sensors.

      Meta has also refreshed the sensor array on the Aria Gen 2 smart glasses, adding a standard RGB camera alongside eye-tracking cameras. Furthermore, the company equipped the glasses with Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) cameras that support 6 degrees of freedom (DoF) movement.

      The hardware includes a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System), a barometer for pressure measurement, and a magnetometer. Additionally, there is a contact-based microphone array on the smart glasses that isolates the speaker’s voice from background noise.

      To maximize efficiency, Meta developed a custom processing assembly that properly powers the sophisticated sensor suite. Regarding battery life, Meta claims the Aria Gen 2 smart glasses can last “six to eight hours of continuous use,” which is a notable achievement.

      Unfortunately, these smart glasses will not be available for general purchase. Instead, they will be distributed to researchers and used internally by Meta's personnel in the Reality Labs and FAIR AI divisions.

      The glasses built on the Aria platform have application in various fields, including automotive technology and the creation of medical tools designed to assist individuals with vision impairments and navigation.

      Data gathered by the Aria Gen 2 smart glasses will also contribute to robotics training. Meta has been pursuing advancements in robotics for several years and is reportedly looking toward humanoid robots in the future.

      Nadeem is a tech and science journalist who began exploring smartphone technology out of curiosity and soon…

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