Facebook has reportedly teamed up with Ray-Ban's parent company Luxottica to develop a pair of Google Glass-style augmented reality glasses.
Codenamed Orion, the glasses will allow users to take calls, view information on a small display, and live-stream their vantage point to their friends and followers on social media, CNBC reports .
Wearers will reportedly use voice commands to control the glasses, with the help of a new artificially intelligent voice assistant that Facebook is also developing.
The company is also experimenting with a ring device, code-named Agios, that would allow users to input information via a motion sensor.
The glasses are designed to replace smartphones, and should be ready for release between 2023 and 2025, according to people familiar with the matter.
CNBC reports that Facebook has hundreds of employees at its Redmond offices working on technology for the AR glasses, which have been in development for a couple of years.
However, the company has struggled to reduce the size of the device into a form factor that consumers will find appealing.
There's no guarantee the glasses will ever come to market, but Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly made them a priority.
He may be hoping that a partnership with Luxottica - which partnered with Google back in 2014 to design and develop Google Glass - will hep to get them completed.
Facebook is not alone in believing that smart glasses that superimpose digital images onto the real world will be the next big thing in computing.
Microsoft's HoloLens and Snapchat's Spectacles already offer some of these features, although neither of these devices have really taken off
Meanwhile, Apple is rumoured to be working on a pair of AR glasses of its own, which could be released as early as next year.
