Earlier this week, we reported that eye gesture control was discovered in the MyGlass Android application, hinting at eye winking calibration and winking to take a picture would be enabled at some point. Two new hints that Google Glass will eventually support eye gestures and winking have shown up thanks to Google publishing the kernel source code and Glass Explorers finding out that Glass shipped unlocked, for developers to easily tinker with.
If you download the Glass kernel source code and take a look at glasshub.c you’ll see references to wink.
While the above code could relate to anything but an actual human eye wink, let’s move onto something we can confirm thanks to an APK teardown. The following code snippets, images, and video were taken directly from GlassGestures.apk located in the Google Glass /system/app/ directory. The GlassGestures.apk includes various files for Wink Gestures and Animations.
From what we can tell from the above, Glass users will calibrate Wink Gestures from a configuration card. The card will include a winking animation (example below) as well as a video demonstration (seen below).
During calibration, users will “Look straight ahead – not at Glass – and wink”. You’ll do this twice to configure your Glass winking ability.
After successful completion, you’ll see a message stating “Now you can wink anytime to take a photo”. If your calibration fails, you’ll be prompted with a failure message or asking if you need additional help.