The e-commerce company Amazon unveiled a pair of smart delivery glasses at its innovation event "Delivering the Future" in San Francisco on October 22. This is according to a press release from the group. The release says that the solution displays real-time navigation and delivery instructions, so that parcel delivery drivers rely less on their smartphones and can focus more on their surroundings.
The glasses, specifically developed for delivery workers, are, according to Amazon, intended to help scan packages, follow step-by-step sidewalk navigation, and capture delivery confirmations – without using the smartphone. The glasses enable hands-free work and reduce the need to look back and forth between the phone, the package, and the surroundings.
Better orientation and hazard detection
Amazon's wearable glasses
use, according to the company, AI-driven sensor capabilities and computer vision as well as cameras to display a heads-up display that shows everything from navigation details to hazards to delivery information. When delivery workers safely park at a delivery location, the glasses automatically activate with delivery information – directly in their field of view – starting with locating the right packages in their vehicles and extending to the corresponding delivery addresses. The display then offers step-by-step pedestrian navigation to the delivery address, with Amazon's geospatial technology employed. In the event of hazards or the need to navigate in complex environments such as multi-family homes, the glasses guide the wearer safely to the destination.
Hundreds of delivery drivers have, according to Amazon, tested
early versions of the glasses and provided crucial feedback. Their insights shaped the solution—from wearability for all-day use to the clarity of the displays.
„I felt safer the whole time because the glasses have the information directly in my field of vision,“ explains Kaleb M., a delivery driver with Maddox Logistics Corporation in Omaha, Nebraska, who tested the technology. „Instead of having to look at a phone, you can look forward and see through the display – you're always focused on what lies ahead.“
The glasses include a small control unit worn in the delivery vest and, in addition to controls and a replaceable battery for all-day use, also feature a dedicated emergency button to reach emergency services if needed during the
route. The glasses also support prescription lenses as well as progressive lenses, which automatically adjust to light.
AI to improve technology
While Amazon continues to refine its technology, the company says it is leveraging advances in AI to create an end-to-end system where technology supports a safer and smoother delivery at every step of the process—from distribution centers, on-road travel to the last hundred meters to customers' doors. The online retailer expects future versions of the glasses to offer real-time error detection, where the glasses can alert delivery workers if they have accidentally left a package at a doorstep that does not match the house or apartment number on the package. Hazards such as dark areas should also be better detected by
