GeekWire tested Amazon's delivery driver smart glasses. How smart are they?

You may see your Amazon delivery driver wearing something new soon: smart glasses. The retail behemoth is testing them out to see if they can boost delivery efficiency. GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop donned some Amazon gear and a pair of the new spectacles to see what's in store. He told KUOW’s Kim Malcolm about his experience.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Kim Malcolm: You tried these glasses out. Walk us through it. What did they do?

Todd Bishop: These are basically augmented reality glasses. You put them on and at the right moment, a little patch of green text and graphics appear in the right-hand lens. The whole idea is to lead delivery drivers through the process of delivering a package. That starts with scanning the package through the glasses, and continues to the end, where they set the package on the doorstep. Then they press a little button on a controller on their vest, and it takes the picture.

So, from start to finish of delivering a package, Amazon delivery drivers will not have to look down at a smartphone in their hand but instead can continue looking straight ahead and have the glasses take care of everything.

What stood out to you about the tech behind these glasses? What should people know about how they work?

When you look at them, they look like they're kind of bulky and super geeky. I wear regular glasses just for vision day to day. I put these glasses on, and they did not feel that much heavier. Amazon said, in the tests they did, they tweaked the design and tried to make them comfortable. They were very comfortable.

The thing is, in my limited usage of them, I still worried that my gaze would be focused so much on the text that was in front of my eyes, even though it was kind of off to the side. I worried that perhaps my attention might go there and not to the world around me.

One of the things that's very clear from the company is, for that reason, these are not used by drivers when they're driving. They turn on once the van is put in park, and the glasses sense that. From that point on, the glasses help them scan packages and take them from the van to the doorstep.

You spoke with an Amazon driver who tested out the smart glasses for a couple of months. What did he tell you about that experience?

I tried to get him to tell me the downsides. With the Amazon contingent a few steps away, for one reason or another, he had nothing negative to say. So, take that for what it's worth. He said that on the rare occasions when he had to go back to his handheld device, his comment was, “Oh, this thing again.” He found that he liked the glasses. He found them seamless to use. He got to the point where he was really not reliant on them but appreciated them more than having to look down at a phone. That really is the alternative that Amazon is trying to get away from here, for safety reasons, according to the company.

How soon could these smart glasses be rolled out, and will all the drivers be using them?

They have not given a specific rollout timeline. They are testing them with a certain number of delivery service partners and drivers. Based on those tests, they will determine how they will make them available to other delivery service partners. These are the independent companies that employ the drivers that deliver Amazon packages.

They are very clear that this is going to be voluntary. Amazon is not going to make either the delivery companies or their drivers wear these if they don't want to. So, it really depends on how widespread the acceptance is of this technology among the workforce of drivers.

Listen to the interview by clicking the play button above.