A look at wearable tech concepts from Google Research's Interaction Lab: sunglasses projecting holographic images, hybrid analog/digital watch UIs, and more
Richard Nieva / CNET : Tweets: @ryp__ and @glenngabe . Thanks: @rogerwcheng Tweets: Robert Young Pelton / @ryp__ : Tatooes...to help track people....this could end badly https://www.cnet.com/... Glenn Gabe / @glenngabe : Smart tattoos that transform your body into a living touchpad? -> Google's quiet experiments may lead to smart tattoos, holographic glasses, grabbing objects in AR, and more https://www.cnet.com/... https://twitter.com/... Thanks: @rogerwcheng
Context & Ripple Effects
This CNET tour of Google Research's Interaction Lab lands mid-arc in a decade of Google body-input experiments: it follows the 2016 Project Soli radar gesture demos for watch and speaker and precedes the lightweight translation AR glasses Google teased in 2022.
What makes the 2020 showcase worth tracking is that some of these lab concepts have a shipping record — radar sensing graduated into the Pixel 4's Motion Sense — so holographic sunglasses, hybrid analog/digital watch faces, smart tattoos, and AR object-grabbing read less as vaporware and more as a staged roadmap, one Meta is running in parallel with its own Reality Labs input research.
First-order effects
- For Google, the showcase signals internally validated directions — projection optics on eyewear, tattoo-based touchpads, gesture-based object manipulation in AR — while consumers get nothing to buy yet, keeping the company's near-term wearable lineup unchanged.
Second-order effects
- Meta's Reality Labs work on a neural-input wristband puts pressure on Google to convert lab demos into hardware before rival input paradigms define the category; the Soli-to-Pixel 4 path shows Google's conversion mechanism, but also its lag between demo and device.
Third-order effects
- If the lab-to-product pattern holds, wearables shift from screens strapped to the body toward the body as the interface itself — skin, skin-adjacent accessories, and gaze — consolidating around whichever player first ships a comfortable all-day form factor rather than whichever demos best.
The trend: Big-platform labs are racing to make the human body itself the input surface, with Google's Interaction Lab concepts marking waypoints between its Soli gesture origins and its AR glasses ambitions.