In late October, well-known AR brand Rokid announced it would hold its Rokid Jungle 2024 partner and new product launch event on November 18. Surprisingly, in addition to familiar tech partners such as DingTalk, Zhixiaobao, iQIYI, bilibili, Taobao, Vivo, and Youdao, the official event poster included Essilor’s well-known fashion eyewear brand, BOLON.
This partnership may seem unexpected but is actually logical. Across both the U.S. and China, the eyewear market is evolving as consumers seek experiences that go beyond traditional “optical functions.” This shift has led to collaborations between tech companies and traditional eyewear brands, like Heidelberg, Supreme, and Dr. Glasses, to create smart eyewear products. Essilor, as a leader in traditional eyewear, has naturally become a sought-after partner for technology brands, especially following the success of Ray-Ban Meta. Both Meta and Google have been vying to collaborate with Essilor on new smart glasses.
However, Rokid’s official poster suggests a new development: a potential partnership between Rokid and BOLON to release an advanced eyewear model, indicating Essilor’s dual strategy of aligning with both Meta and Rokid.
Why Smart Glasses?
Recent years have seen a rise in smart eyewear designed to prioritize traditional eyewear experiences—such as fashion, comfort, and vision correction—while integrating smart features. The Ray-Ban Meta, for example, combines stylish looks with photo and video capabilities, music playback, phone calls, and even AI functions, significantly enhancing the user experience over early models of smart glasses.
However, this cross-industry progress has also exposed some limitations. Most smart glasses, in prioritizing lightweight comfort, sacrifice core display features, which limits their utility as devices for the next generation of human-computer interaction. AR glasses, however, can overlay digital elements onto the real world, providing real-time information displays, such as navigation directions or notifications, without needing to look down at a phone.
Rokid’s Technological Advantage
Rokid’s new-generation smart AR glasses are likely to adopt light waveguide technology, which allows lightweight AR displays in eyewear that resemble conventional glasses. Unlike Meta’s costly prototype AR glasses, Rokid’s product, in collaboration with BOLON, seems ready for the market, backed by its established ecosystem and experience in AR and AI.
Rokid’s unique advantage lies in its AI and AR technology foundation. The company has developed its own YodaOS-Master spatial operating system, which ensures high responsiveness for tasks like SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping), gesture control, and multi-tasking. Rokid’s AR Lite glasses, which offer an efficient multi-screen experience in a 75g frame, have been highly popular, attracting a user base of nearly 300,000.
Rokid’s integration with Essilor may also stem from its strong foothold in China, a key market where consumers have a high acceptance of new technologies. Rokid’s broader AR ecosystem, which includes partnerships with hardware, software, content, and AI leaders, gives it resilience and adaptability. Even Google has collaborated with Rokid to explore an “AR+TV” model, merging AR with global mobile entertainment.
A Vision of Future AR Glasses
For a long time, people have envisioned glasses that combine the convenience of traditional eyewear with the ability to overlay digital information seamlessly into the real world, without the need to look down or hold a device. Rokid has been working towards this goal, making significant strides in AR glasses technology, especially with its proprietary YodaOS-Master operating system and its exploration of light waveguide technology.
The November 18 Rokid Jungle 2024 event promises to be more than just a product launch. It could mark a historic step in the evolution of smart AR glasses, heralding a new era in human-computer interaction and bringing AR closer to everyday life.
