Google appears to be building a dedicated augmented reality OS

Google seems to be actively recruiting a team to develop a specialised operating system (OS) solely for augmented reality (AR) devices.  

The company has listed a number of jobs in this regard and also roped in veteran software engineer Mark Lucovsky to lead as a senior director of engineering for AR OS at the platform.  

Read more: Powering the future metaverse with AR and VR

Earlier, the executive served as an engineering director at Google between 2004 and 2009 and was most recently the general manager of operating systems at Facebook’s Oculus. 

Job listings posted by Google with regards to its AR OS ambitions state that the company is also looking to develop “innovative AR hardware”.  

Google’s most prominent efforts in the AR space has been Google Glass, which the company has marketed to enterprise customers. However, the latter runs on Android itself -- and not on a specialised AR platform. 

With much talks around the advent of the metaverse and more businesses finally taking up virtual reality (VR) with more gusto, the time may be apt for companies such as Google to look at AR with increasing interest.  

Integrated with cryptocurrencies, AIoT (artificial intelligence of things) and other related fields, the concept of a metaverse also involves viable hardware -- instead of bulky VR headsets that are far from being the most user friendly. 

Read more: What's so unique about Meta? Mixing reality with an Alphabet soup

Google’s job postings don’t leave it a secret that the company may have hardware ambitions in the AR space too, for which it is building a team to create what could be an entirely new AR ecosystem from scratch. 

This isn’t the first time that Google is building an AR platform, though.  

The company’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) division has already created Project Tango, an AR computing platform that specialised in spatial augmentation -- among other things. 

Going forward, it will be interesting to see if Google’s AR hardware plans also involve consumer hardware. Fellow big tech firm, Apple is believed to also be working on an AR headset, which could be unveiled as early as next year itself.