Google patents version of Glass that affixes a monocle to the end of a flexible headband

By Jason Hahn November 29, 2015

google patents version glass affixes monocle end flexible headband — Image used with permission by copyright holder

A future version of Google Glass could make you look like a futuristic version of Mr. Peanut, according to a new Google patent for an overhauled version of the wearable device that is essentially a monocle attached to the end of a flexible band that wraps around one side of a person’s head. The result is a small display that is “suspended over an eye adjacent to the temple,” or a stripped-down version of the first version of Google Glass.

The patent, titled “Wearable device with input and output structures,” was filed on September 28, 2012, and granted on November 24. It’s worth noting that this means Google filed the patent shortly after the first version of Project Glass was announced to the world in April 2012 and before the Explorer edition was sent to developers in April 2013.

Google’s full description of the monocle device is 324-word run-on sentence, but it’s basically a flexible band that the user can shape any way he or she wants to fit around the back of their head, over their ear, and around their temple. An image filed with the patent explains it best:

The patent also notes that the band would have “touch-based input circuitry,” which means the wearer could presumably tap the band to change the information displayed on the monocle over their eye.

Google did not respond to inquiries from CNET or The Verge.

This is hardly the only word about Google Glass since Google ended the Explorer program in January. For instance, in July, rumors emerged about a Google for Work enterprise program that would give employees free Glass units. Earlier this month, insiders were cited as saying Google was working on two versions of a wearable device that did not have screens and relied on audio.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Contributor

Jason Hahn is a part-time freelance writer based in New Jersey. He earned his master's degree in journalism at Northwestern…

Computing

This AI cloned my voice using just three minutes of audio

acapela group voice cloning ad

There's a scene in Mission Impossible 3 that you might recall. In it, our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) tackles the movie's villain, holds him at gunpoint, and forces him to read a bizarre series of sentences aloud.

"The pleasure of Busby's company is what I most enjoy," he reluctantly reads. "He put a tack on Miss Yancy's chair, and she called him a horrible boy. At the end of the month, he was flinging two kittens across the width of the room ..."

News

Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards

Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

News

Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.