Applied Materials VP Says Display-Capable AI Glasses Could Become Mainstream Middle Ground

Applied Materials, founded in 1967 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, supplies materials engineering equipment, software and services to the chip and advanced display industries. Its technologies cover thin-film deposition, etching, ion implantation, inspection, advanced packaging and display panel manufacturing. The company is now bringing those capabilities into smart glasses.

Months ago, Applied Materials introduced SENZ, an integrated visual system platform for AI smart glasses. The platform combines waveguides, optical engines, cameras, sensors, vision correction and electrochromic technologies. It is intended to address long-standing supply chain and system integration problems. Terminal makers have typically sourced waveguides, optical engines, cameras, lenses and sensors separately, then integrated the modules. Each part may be strong on its own, but combining them into a pair of glasses requires rebalancing display quality, weight, thickness, power consumption, yield and cost. SENZ aims to optimize these components together from the design stage, reduce manufacturing complexity and help terminal makers bring products to market faster. Applied Materials is investing in pilot and production facilities in Singapore and working with GlobalFoundries to advance large-scale waveguide production. It is also a partner in Qualcomm's Snapdragon START program and is working with EssilorLuxottica to commercialize optical systems for next-generation AR and AI smart glasses.

Meissner said the three broad product types will exist for some time. Simple, lower-cost audio glasses have their own use cases; display-capable products will have a market; and high-end AR glasses with high field of view, complex functions and possibly greater weight will also remain. Over a longer period, perhaps ten years or more, the three forms may gradually converge. He compared the process to the car market. Professional scenarios such as medical and enterprise use may require very high performance, and users may accept greater weight, higher prices or compromises in comfort. As technologies mature, weight falls and costs decline, features once limited to high-end products will enter the mainstream. He said the second category, which balances display capability, function and comfort, may ultimately become the largest mainstream market. The lowest-end and highest-end products will continue to exist. With about 8 billion people in the world and annual smartphone sales of only about 1 billion to 1.5 billion units, not everyone needs the latest flagship technology, he said. Most of the market will concentrate in a middle ground that has most important functions while remaining light and comfortable. Fashion and wearing experience are also important. Meissner outlined three principles for good products: Technology Invisible, Human Centric and Engineered with Excellence. Technology should serve people without constantly reminding them that it is present, the product must be centered on people and serve their lives while helping AI provide better assistance, and engineering must be excellent. The three factors must exist at the same time.

Asked why display capability is necessary on glasses, Meissner said no one can accurately predict which application will become the killer app for display-equipped smart glasses, but some things are already known. Humans process far more information through their eyes than through their ears or other senses. In health monitoring, future glasses could include sensors that track eye or body conditions and provide real-time feedback, such as telling a user to blink more or take a break. That information could also be delivered through earphones, but visual feedback can carry richer information. Binocular display can also produce 3D information, making interaction with AI more natural. Meissner said he was surprised two years ago when he first experienced high-quality 3D display: when a system presents options and one is highlighted in 3D, a user can select and navigate naturally with the eyes without touching anything. On attention problems, such as whether a user wearing HUD glasses appears not to be looking at a conversation partner, Meissner said the simplest answer is that people already become distracted. Even while looking at someone, the brain may be thinking about other things. The problem of humans not being able to maintain absolute focus cannot be solved, he said. But a high-quality display system can blend information more naturally into the real environment, allowing a user to converse while calmly processing other information. In the longer term, he sees a huge opportunity. Before the Gutenberg printing press, knowledge was mainly transmitted orally, and only a few people controlled large amounts of information. Printing changed how humans acquired knowledge and thought, allowing them to read about events from ten, fifty or even a thousand years earlier. AI may have a similar impact on a scale ten times larger, because for the first time humans can continuously interact with a brain outside their own brain. High-quality display will become an important communication channel between humans and AI. If light is already being projected into the eyes through an optical engine, adding contact sensors, eye tracking or other sensors could make interaction between people and AI more direct and natural.

On technology roadmaps, Meissner agreed that the shift from monochrome to multi-color is the first direction and is happening quickly. Optical engines and waveguides are improving almost daily. He expects more high-quality multi-color display smart glasses to appear on the market by 2027. Display systems will also move toward lower power consumption and higher display quality, improving overall battery life. The second route is electrochromic technology. Electrochromic is not strictly a display technology. When the lens darkens, it can improve display contrast, but its greater value is convenience. Users may need different lenses indoors and outdoors. With electrochromic technology, one pair of glasses can serve both indoor and outdoor scenarios, eliminating the need for two pairs. In addition, various sensor technologies will continue to be integrated into smart glasses. In the next three years, he said, two important directions will be multi-color, high-quality, low-power displays and functional integration including electrochromic and sensors. In about three years, these capabilities will gradually become standard configurations in smart glasses.

Meissner also addressed competition from cameras and sensors on earbuds, watches, rings and other wearables. He agreed that other devices will persist and have their own advantages. Measuring heart rate from the wrist or finger, for example, may be more suitable than measuring it from the head. But placing devices on the head has two important advantages. First, most human perception is concentrated in the head: sight, hearing, smell and taste all come from there, while touch is mainly distributed elsewhere. People naturally turn their heads when trying to understand their surroundings. A camera could be placed in earbuds, but that would make the earbuds larger, and earbuds are meant to be as small and unnoticeable as possible. Hiding large amounts of technology in glasses, an existing form, is important. Second, health. Vision health is a major part of longer and healthier lives. Observing the eyes can reveal many body conditions and disease developments, potentially providing much richer information than heart rate alone. If a head-mounted device can contact the skin and observe the eyes at the same time, it may judge stress states and remind a user to relax. As people live longer, vision correction will become more common. Even without smart glasses, many people will eventually need some form of glasses and vision correction. If AI and sensor technologies can be further integrated, glasses could become an important device for improving human life. China has about 600 million people with myopia, and display-equipped smart glasses are often difficult to combine well with prescription lenses. Asked about technologies to solve integration between display systems and prescription lenses, Meissner said the problem breaks into two parts, according to the published interview excerpt.