Use cases
Every case carries something someone has already done, with the address the information came from.
Data collection for AI
The machine never saw a pair of hands work. The glasses show it
Almost everything on this page is a dataset, not a product. Human first-person video is what robot learning was missing, and the glasses are the cheapest way to record it. Also here: the day Amazon announced its delivery glasses, and what the Chinese industry signed.
Cited case
Meta Reality Labs Research, Project Aria partner program. Meta lends its Project Aria research glasses (egocentric camera, SLAM, eye tracking and hand tracking) to more than 290 academic and industrial partners, who operate over 1,000 devices in 27 countries to record first-person video used in machine perception, contextual AI and robot learning.
Augmented reality
Augmented reality that pays for itself
Not the floating hologram of the ads. The AR that already earns money is a line of text or an arrow put where the eye already was, and the numbers below come from the companies that deployed it.
Cited case
The Clorox Company. Vuzix M400 glasses running Atheer software, used for mandatory quarterly plant audits without flying the auditor in (first person video) and for remote maintenance support during the covid-19 pandemic.
Decision support
Text in front of the eye while the hands work
The oldest and best documented use of smart glasses: put the next instruction where the person is already looking, so they never put the work down to go read it.
Cited case
GE Aviation (jet engines) with Upskill/Skylight. Mechanics used Google Glass Enterprise Edition running Skylight (Upskill) together with a Wi-Fi connected torque wrench to follow engine assembly and overhaul instructions and to log the torque applied to every bolt automatically, creating a digital record of the work.
Teaching
The lesson is the point of view
Nine schools, from a bricklaying workshop in Krefeld to a deaf school in Nanjing, put the camera or the caption where the student's eyes already are. What changes is not the content, it is who gets to see the hands.
Cited case
Martec Training, a UK vocational education provider (Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire), in a trial run jointly with Autotech Connect, the Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI) and RealWear. Equipped automotive courses for students with special educational needs (SEN) with RealWear headsets, letting students record and play back hands-free workshop demonstrations at their own pace while keeping both hands free for the practical task.
Trade shows and events
A hall full of strangers who speak other languages
Trade fairs and events are where the glasses meet the widest range of reactions: booths that book orders through them, customs officers who inspect with them, and a hacker conference that throws you out for wearing them.
Cited case
Hangzhou Lawaken Technology (李未可科技, brand LAWK) with exhibition organizer Meorient (米奥兰特国际会展) and exhibitor Dongguan Blackpanther Electronics (东莞黑豹电子). LAWK and Meorient built what they call the first end-to-end hardware+software AI package for trade-fair booths: exhibition staff wear LAWK AI glasses running the WAKE-AI model, tuned for near-100 languages with extra depth on Southeast Asian languages, that keep >90% recognition accuracy down to -5dB background noise and auto-generate structured meeting minutes after each conversation.
Labels and batches
Look at the label, get the answer, keep both hands on the box
Warehouse picking is the oldest paying use of these glasses and the one with the most published numbers. It is also the only sector here with two studies that measured the technology losing.
Cited case
DHL Supply Chain / DHL Express (Vision Picking programme), with Ricoh, Ubimax and Vuzix. Order pickers use glasses with a HUD instead of a paper list or a handheld scanner: the camera reads the item's barcode and the display shows aisle, shelf position and quantity, with both hands free for the cart. The programme has three public milestones: a 3-week pilot with 10 operators in 2015, with Google Glass and Vuzix M100 (https://logisticsviewpoints.com/2015/04/16/picking-with-vision/); adoption as the standard in 2017, with Vuzix M100 and M300 running Ubimax's Xpick (the main source for this case); global expansion in 2019 with Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2 (https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/dhl-vision-picking-program-google-glass-wearables/555636/).
Languages
The word stays next to the thing it names
Learning a language on glasses is not translation. It is putting the word where the object is, and the laboratory result that matters was measured four days later, not on the day.
Cited case
Rokid, in partnership with NetEase Youdao (Chinese education group), integrating the Hi Echo English app. Anyone wearing the Rokid AR Lite (the Max 2 + Station 2 bundle) can open Youdao's Hi Echo app and enter an augmented reality setting with a virtual English teacher: she starts the conversation, adjusts the difficulty to the user's answers, and explains the meaning and examples of an unfamiliar word when it is tapped on screen.
Law
In court the glasses are usually the evidence, not the tool
Every other sector here shows glasses helping somebody work. This one shows courts confiscating them at the door, and a witness whose entire testimony was thrown out because a voice was answering for him.
Cited case
Laimonas Jakstys, Lithuanian businessman, claimant in a corporate dispute. During cross-examination in a case about the ownership and management of a property developer, ICC Judge Raquel Agnello KC noticed long pauses before each of Jakstys's answers; defence counsel Sarah Walker and the Lithuanian interpreter reported hearing a voice coming from the glasses he was wearing, and the judge ordered him to take them off.
Medicine
Nothing on this page makes a diagnosis. What the glasses carry is another doctor
Fifteen cases, and almost all of them are the same idea: a specialist who is not in the room, seeing what the hands in the room see. One system navigates inside the body and has FDA clearance. One study measured the checklist. One hospital is writing a ban.
Cited case
Dr Rafael Grossmann, general and trauma surgeon at Eastern Maine Medical Center. The first surgeon to use Google Glass (Explorer Edition) during a real operation, streaming a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (feeding tube placement) live over a Google Hangout. He deliberately chose a simple procedure so as not to divert attention from the patient, and avoided transmitting anything that identified them.
Public safety
The glasses are the same. What changes is who is in the database
Sixteen cases. Seven fugitives caught at a station gate in 2018, a thousand officers on a parade route in 2026, two Harvard students naming strangers on the street, and the agency that banned its own people from wearing them.
Cited case
Jiefang Road police station, Heping district public security sub-bureau. Officers wear domestically developed AI smart glasses on patrol to identify text, objects and people, and to help locate missing persons (case cited: an elderly missing man).
Sales
The weakest evidence on this site, and we are not hiding it
Glasses that whisper sales arguments in your ear are the easiest thing to imagine and the hardest to find proof of. Two insurers piloted them and said no. One measured a real saving. The rest is after-sales support wearing a sales label.
Cited case
Erie Insurance, "Think Ahead" innovation program. Eight claims staff (two material-damage appraisers and two property adjusters per branch) wore Google Glass Explorer Edition on customer visits during a four-month pilot, recording video and photos of property damage while discussing the claim and the settlement with the policyholder on site.
Science
Here the glasses are the instrument, and two studies say what they cost
Twelve peer-reviewed papers. Eye-tracking headgear on marmosets and ferrets, a 33-step protocol on a lab bench, a resuscitation drill on a research ship over Starlink, and two studies that measured the discomfort instead of selling around it.
Cited case
Richard W. Marklin (Marquette University), Ashley M. Toll (Milwaukee Tool Co.), Eric H. Bauman (Electric Power Research Institute, EPRI), John J. Simmins (Alfred University), John F. LaDisa and Robert Cooper (Marquette University). Twelve line and substation workers and thirteen manhole workers at electric utilities carried out their normal field tasks wearing a Microsoft HoloLens, a RealWear HMT-1, or no glasses at all, while the researchers recorded surface electromyography (EMG) from eight neck muscles and blink rate to measure muscle load and eye fatigue.
Sourcing in China
Inspecting a Chinese factory without getting on the plane
Two of these cases are the reason this company exists: an inspection done in China with the specialist still in Europe. The other six are Chinese customs, which adopted the same idea faster than the importers did.
Cited case
TUV SUD, inspecting a Chinese manufacturer and distributor of electronic valves for nuclear and thermal power plants. During a lockdown period, the manufacturer needed an independent quality assessment to meet regulatory requirements for selling in France and the United Kingdom. TUV SUD staff in China used RealWear AR glasses (model HMT-1) with oculavis's SHARE app to call in German specialists (electrical engineering, non-destructive testing, leak tightness, welding) who checked critical components against digital manuals and circuit diagrams.
Teleprompter
The script is in front of your eye, so you can look at the room
The one function ordinary people buy these glasses for today. Nine cases, from a CCTV anchor live on air to a chairman at China's Two Sessions, and one two-hour talk where the honest report says what got tiring.
Cited case
Zhu Mingming (祝铭明, also known by his English name "Misa"), founder and CEO of Hangzhou Lingban Technology (Rokid). Wore the company's own Rokid Glasses on stage to deliver a keynote at the Yuhang District economic high-quality development conference, with the full prepared speech displayed on the glasses' lenses and pages advanced by tapping a smart ring on his finger, so he spoke without holding or glancing at a paper script.
Tourism
China put the guide inside the glasses. Some places put a sign on the door
Museums and heritage sites are where tourism glasses actually run, and almost all of it is Chinese. The other half of this page is the places that ban them: San Francisco bars in 2014, and every public deck of an MSC ship since July 2025.
Cited case
Rokid + Liangzhu Museum and Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City (5,000-year-old UNESCO site). Visitors wear Rokid Glass 2 AR glasses for a guided tour of the 34 km2 archaeological site and museum: visual recognition of relics triggers digital overlays (e.g. a jade bi disc that releases an animated bird), voice-controlled virtual guide, AR navigation map and simulated restorations of ruined buildings. Rokid and site staff called it the first time the Liangzhu ruins used AR to guide, inform and restore artifacts.
Live translation
Live translation on the lens
The most sold feature of smart glasses, and the one with the widest gap between the demo and the day. Here is what people who used it in the field reported, with the address of every claim.
Cited case
iFLYTEK (科大讯飞), its own stall team at the 139th Canton Fair; foreign buyers named in the source: EDELIO (Argentina), a Brazilian buyer, Ramtin and his mother (Persian speakers) and Hasan (a Kazakh representative). The stall team used iFLYTEK's AI glasses (讯飞AI眼镜, called GlassClaw on the AstronClaw architecture, 40 g) to serve foreign buyers on the floor: simultaneous face to face translation across 122 languages, accents and dialects, an array of 5 air conduction microphones and 1 bone conduction microphone with lip reading noise reduction to survive the hall, automatic capture of the talking points and a structured summary sent by e-mail afterwards. Second source, on the fair's first smart wearables zone, opened 15/04/2026: https://cnews.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202604/16/WS69e0a3faa310942cc49a7f7d.html