Despite not having released a new version of Google Glass, the company’s connected eyewear product, it’s already assembled a new secret team in charge of reviving Glass as well as expanding into other wearable devices.
Dubbed Project Aura (not to be confused with the company’s mobile phone Project Ara), Google has been working on it since June, according to Business Insider. The company has hired at least three experts from Lab126, Amazon’s (AMZN) division in charge of building its hardware products such as the Kindle tablets, the report notes.
Google declined to comment about the report.
After the first version of Google Glass failed to take off the way the company hoped, it recently stopped selling the $1,500 model and reassigned the team under Tony Fadell, co-founder and CEO of connected home device company Nest, which Google (GOOG) acquired last year. Google recently announced the formation of a parent company, Alphabet, under which divisions like Google (its ads business, search unit, Android, and related products’ home), Nest, and Google X will be housed. Project Aura will remain as part of the Google unit, while Fadell will head Nest, according to a Business Insider source. It’s unclear how the relationship will function.
The new team will also likely explore virtual reality, an emerging technology that companies like Facebook and Samsung have been working on. However, it’s not clear it will focus on virtual reality.
In recent months, Google’s been rumored to be working on an upcoming enterprise-focused version of Glass, an area of applications the original version found more success than among consumers. Italian luxury eyewear company Luxottica’s CEO also revealed recently that it’s been tapped to work on an upcoming version of the eyewear product.
