Xiaomi shows off some wireless AR glasses with impressive gesture-based interactivity

The Xiaomi Wireless AR Glass Discovery Edition was revealed at MWC 2023

It's looking like 2023 could be a big year for VR and AR technology. Apple is highly expected to reveal its long-delayed AR-VR headset later this year. Today at Mobile World Congress 2023, Xiaomi showed off a concept product of its own, the Xiaomi Wireless AR Glass Discovery Edition.

Xiaomi says the glasses use Qualcomm's Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 chip design inside. It added:

The AR glasses feature a lightweight design that incorporates a range of lightweight materials such as magnesium-lithium alloy, carbon fiber parts, and a self-developed silicon-oxygen anode battery. With a weight of just 126g, these glasses are designed to minimize any physical burden on the user.

The glasses include two MicroOLED screens, and they can generate up to 1,200 nits in brightness. They can be used to fully immerse the user in its images, like a VR headset. However, its primary use seems to be in AR applications.

Xiaomi has come up with a gesture control system for the glasses. Users can interact with apps, virtual web pages, and videos by moving their fingers. They can even control smart devices like lights by just looking at them and moving their fingers to turn them off. It adds:

Popular applications like TikTok and YouTube can optimize display area usage of the glasses, essentially turning them into a portable large screen. Additionally, the AR capability allows users to place familiar apps anywhere in the viewing space and adjust their interface size via spatial gestures, thus enhancing the efficiency and overall experience of information access.

The Xiaomi AR glasses are designed to be paired with smartphones that support Qualcomm Snapdragon Spaces. They also support OpenXR, and even Microsoft's Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK). that was developed for the company's own HoloLens headsets.

Xiaomi didn't reveal if this will be a product it will eventually release to the public, and it's possible that the company could not move forward with this AR technology. If they do, we suspect these glasses will be on the pricey side, and we also have questions about battery life and how the gesture controls will work in the real world. However, they are an interesting take on a future AR headset.