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This paper systematically surveys the evolution of smart glasses from simple display devices to comprehensive first-person intelligence platforms that integrate human perception with actionable insights. It identifies the critical challenge of creating a cohesive perception-state-interaction-action loop under constraints such as energy and privacy, and introduces a unified framework that organizes existing literature and capabilities. Key findings include the development of an L0-L5 framework for smart glasses, which enhances comparability and deployability across various applications and outlines a roadmap for building trustworthy first-person intelligence systems.
Smart glasses can now be evaluated through a novel L0-L5 framework that bridges perception and action, paving the way for reliable first-person intelligence systems.
Smart glasses are evolving from capture and display accessories into first-person intelligence platforms that connect human perception, persistent context, and digital or physical action. Their on-body viewpoint aligns with the wearer's vision, audition, motion, and hand-object interaction, but must operate under tight energy, thermal, privacy, and feedback constraints. Despite rapid progress in augmented reality, egocentric vision, multimodal models, human-computer interaction, and embodied intelligence, the literature remains fragmented across devices, tasks, and benchmarks. \textit{The key challenge is not whether a model can recognize, answer, remember, or act in isolation, but whether a complete system can sustain a reliable, temporally valid, correctable, and governable perception-state-interaction-action loop.} This survey is \textit{the \textbf{first} to systematically study smart glasses through such a unified framework}. We formalize first-person data flow and constrained task utility, characterize devices along eight verifiable hardware capability axes, organize the literature around seven interdependent foundational capabilities, and introduce an L0-L5 framework spanning capture, reactive perception, contextual assistance, persistent state, governed action, and embodied coupling. Across nine application scenes, we connect tasks with datasets, systems, products, stakeholders, failure consequences, and evidence gaps. We further present a nine-dimensional deployment framework, a claim-conditioned evaluation protocol, and an evidence ladder from controlled measurement to longitudinal field validation and audit. Together, these elements make smart glasses more comparable, deployable, and reproducibly evaluated, while outlining a roadmap toward trustworthy first-person intelligence.
