Meta unveils Aria Gen 2 research smart glasses
The 74-76g device doubled Gen 1's cameras to four, widened stereo overlap from 35° to 80°, and added a heart-rate sensor, but stayed a researcher-only tool.
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Meta’s Reality Labs unveiled Aria Gen 2, an updated version of its research-only smart glasses platform aimed at helping outside researchers advance machine perception, contextual AI and robotics rather than at consumers. The glasses weighed 74 to 76 grams depending on size, came in eight variants to fit different head shapes, and carried four computer-vision cameras — double the two on the original Aria — with a wider stereo overlap of 80 degrees, up from 35, and a higher dynamic range sensor for low-light performance.
Onboard sensors included eye tracking capable of measuring gaze, vergence and pupil size, 3D hand tracking with articulated joint poses, a contact microphone built into the nosepad for capturing audio in noisy environments, and a photoplethysmography sensor for heart-rate estimation. The device ran on-device visual-inertial odometry for six-degree-of-freedom spatial tracking, processing much of this perception locally rather than offloading it to a paired phone or cloud service.
Unlike Meta’s consumer Ray-Ban smart glasses line, Aria Gen 2 was not sold to the public; Meta positioned it as a platform for external research partnerships, to be expanded later in 2025. It extended Meta’s long-running Project Aria research programme, which the company has used to build datasets and perception systems that feed into both its consumer wearables and its robotics research.