From Project Ara to Wave, Google has a rich history of bailing on neat ideas when the going gets tough. Yet unlike those forgone experiments, augmented-reality glasses apparently aren’t doomed to rest in Google’s metaphorical graveyard.
Instead, the advertising company is tip-toeing its spiritual successor to Glass back into the wild. After teasing the smart glasses in May, Google says it is moving forward with “small-scale,” “limited” public tests, carried out by its employees and “select trusted testers.”
With cameras, microphones and in-lens displays, the glasses will do things like translate text and help users navigate, but “they’ll have strict limitations,” AR product manager Juston Payne said in a statement. Crucially, the “prototypes don’t support photography and videography, though image data will be used to enable experiences like translating the menu in front of you or showing you directions to a nearby coffee shop,” Payne added.
Google also said it won’t conduct tests in places like government offices, hospitals or schools. I …
