We expect to see an Apple Glasses product launch at some point next year, and a sketchy rumor suggests they could borrow a key feature from Vision Pro.
Specifically, it’s said that they might be able to recognize hand gestures as a way to interact with the wearable device – but there’s good reason to doubt this claim…
The Hand Gesture Claim
Early VR headsets relied on hardware such as handheld controllers as input devices. Vision Pro has significantly streamlined the way users interact with the device by giving it the ability to recognize hand gestures without the need for additional hardware.
Woozad cites an “internal source” in suggesting that Apple Glasses will have the same capability.
The AI glasses will include two cameras. A high-resolution camera will be included to capture photos and videos that can be shared on social media and used like photos on iPhone. A second, lower resolution wide-angle lens will read hand gestures and provide visual input to Siri.
The site links this to similar rumors that AirPods would have cameras for the same reason.
Reasons for skepticism
Apple Glasses are expected to have one or two cameras, unlike Vision Pro’s eight external cameras and four internal eye-tracking cameras. Relying on a single low-resolution external camera to recognize hand gestures, as the report suggests, would be difficult to achieve with any reliability.
Bloomberg Mark Gurman also expressed his own skepticism about the idea.
To my knowledge, the technology to do this reliably with a single camera, without neural striping and eye scanning, does not exist today. I also haven’t heard anything to suggest that the first version features a sophisticated form of gestures like this describes. I am extremely skeptical.
What does seem likely is support for AirPods-style head gestures like nodding and shaking your head, and it could be that the source of this rumor confused this with support for hand gestures.
That said, this is not the case totally There’s no way wearable devices can use a combination of extremely obvious head gestures and hand gestures – but we’re certainly looking at this report with a very large pinch of salt.
Photo: Apple
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