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Details
- Meta has opened a £12m ($16m) audio research lab in Cambridge, UK, dedicated to advancing audio technology for Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses.
- The initiative, supported by UK government officials including Chancellor Rachel Reeves, underscores Meta’s commitment to growing innovation in Britain.
- The lab replicates real-world environments with ultra-quiet chambers, a large reverberation room, instrumented home mockups, and motion tracking zones to train AI adaptive audio systems.
- This expansion builds on Meta’s existing investment in UK hardware and aligns with the government's Ox-Cam corridor initiative to promote high-tech research.
- The lab’s research aims to tackle challenges like isolating speech in noisy settings, which could make smart glasses more usable for everyday consumers.
Impact
Meta’s new Cambridge facility propels its wearable AI ambitions by developing smarter, more context-aware audio for AR glasses. The investment highlights the UK’s emergence as a significant center for AI innovation and signals broader potential for smart glasses to become mainstream devices through enhanced usability in real-world situations.
