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Pilots Are Wearing Google Glass Now

Flying the augmented skies.
Google Glass has entered the cockpit. Image: Wikimedia

Google upped its fashion game this week, announcing it's working with hip eyewear brands like Ray Ban to de-nerdify its high-tech glasses, which means we can look forward to augmented aviators before too long. Apparently, just in time, because Google Glass has officially entered the cockpit.

Two pilots flew a Beechcraft King Air C-90 aircraft wearing the computerized eyewear this month, in what they're calling the first Glass-assisted flight, Aeriaa first reported. (Though, at least one tech-savvy pilot-to-be has tried it out before.) Naturally, there's a video of the pioneering trip, unearthed today by Jalopnik. It's shot from the cockpit, so you can see what the future of flight might look like.

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Admittedly, it's not exactly gripping footage. Information cards on the display walk the pilots through the pre-flight safety inspection and takeoff checklist, and augment their frame of vision with air navigation maps and meteorological charts en route. It's just like if Google Maps was projected on your windshield while driving, except the little blue dot that follows your current location is shaped like a tiny airplane.

Nonetheless, it's something of a watershed moment for the aviation industry, which, like so many industries, has been speculating about the potential benefits of Glass and similar AR technology. Adventia European College of Aeronautics, the flight training school that carried out the Glass flight on March 5, as part of "Pilot Innovation Day," listed some of these benefits in a press release for the event.

First, there's safety: Pilots don't have to let go of flight controls or even glance away to see data like coordinates, weather updates, etc during the flight. There’s also potential cost savings: According to Adventia, the digital display could save 150,000 Euro and 60 kg a year spent carrying paper onboard. And the device could help better educate pilots-in-training by offering a real-time, data-rich peek into the cockpit.

The flight app was developed by Droiders, an official Google Glass developer, and its checklists are modeled off the checklist app that Stanford University Faculty of Medicine use in surgery. It forces the wearer to complete every item on the list before continuing, so that it also theoretically minimizes mistakes.

Of course, it's just a proof of concept; as you can imagine, there are lots of questions left to answer. What if pilots start relying on this automated controls, and their device is hacked, or there's a glitch? Just this week, a couple of computer engineering students in Israel demonstrated that the GPS app Waze, also a Google product, could be hacked to create a fake traffic jam and throw off everyone's commute. That's disconcerting enough on the road, imagine if someone wanted to mess with aircraft navigation in the sky.

What's more, Glass isn't even commercially available yet, though it's supposed to hit shelves sometime this year. So, your next cross-country jaunt isn’t going to be piloted by a robot. But some travelers will start seeing the device while flying the friendly skies. Virgin, everyone's favorite futurist airline, is testing out the gadget for staff attendants, so while a Google Glass app won't help captain your next trip, it might take your next in-flight beverage order.