Former Oppo executives target travelers with a different take on AI glasses

A group of former Oppo executives is developing artificial intelligence glasses for travelers, with features focused on photography, live translation, and AI-guided tours.

The company is narrowing the pitch for smart glasses to a specific use: helping travelers document their trips and understand unfamiliar surroundings without repeatedly reaching for their phones.

L’Atitude 52°N is owned by APOM Optical Technology, a Shenzhen-registered company founded in 2024 by smartphone industry veterans. Its first pair of glasses starts at USD 399, and the company has raised nearly USD 400,000 through crowdfunding, according to 36Kr. APOM expects to stock around 20,000 pairs in 2026, primarily for the European and US markets, and is seeking a new funding round.

The launch comes as competing approaches to smart glasses continue to evolve. Early efforts centered on augmented reality, using displays, optical components that direct light toward the eye, and spatial computing to create a new computing platform. Weight, power consumption, cost, and manufacturing constraints limited those ambitions. Generative AI brought a different proposition: glasses that could offer access to AI assistants on the fly and interpret the wearer’s surroundings.

Meta has moved beyond camera glasses without displays to Meta Ray-Ban Display, which adds a display and wristband controls. Google has also announced plans to launch Gemini-powered smart glasses in fall 2026. Startups with limited resources face a choice: develop a general-purpose device or focus on a specific use people will pay for.

Gary Chen, founder and CEO of APOM, brings nearly 18 years of smartphone industry experience. He began in Android development and worked on phone software and system frameworks at HTC. After joining OnePlus in 2016, he moved from R&D into product and operations, later overseeing operating-system work. Following OnePlus’ integration into Oppo, he handled software product planning across brands and contributed to research on software and AI.

Co-founder and CTO Zheng Xiaohua previously led imaging R&D for OnePlus phones and Oppo’s flagship devices.

Building on conventional eyewear

Years spent working on smartphones convinced Chen that AI and systems combining voice, images, and other inputs would change how people interact with technology. That experience also made him wary of trying to create an entirely new product category.

The team has instead adopted a pared-down approach to product design. L’Atitude 52°N omits audio recording, meeting transcription, and voice notes, focusing on first-person photography and video, live translation, and AI-guided tours.

APOM has instead concentrated on water and drop resistance, a one-piece injection-molded front frame, eyewear design, and the charging case. These less conspicuous features reflect Chen’s view that smart glasses should improve on conventional eyewear without asking people to adapt to an unfamiliar product category.

Many widely adopted smart devices have followed that pattern. Wireless earbuds removed the cables without changing the basic way people listened to music. Chen sees smart glasses similarly: added capabilities matter, but people will reject them if they make the glasses heavier, bulkier, or more fragile.

That also means the smartphone playbook does not transfer directly. A phone is a general-purpose device; people do not switch phones for travel, running, or work, Chen told 36Kr. Glasses, however, must suit a person’s face, clothes, and activities. The market may therefore accommodate more than a handful of general-purpose products, with startups finding opportunities in specific, well-defined uses rather than directly challenging Meta or Google.

APOM chose to focus on travel in Europe and the US, where it sees more established habits of wearing sunglasses. Travel also makes the convenience of smart glasses easier to appreciate. In an office, a phone, computer, and power supply are close at hand, leaving glasses with less distinctive value. In a museum, an unfamiliar city, or on an outdoor route, travelers want to record and understand what they see and communicate across languages. Repeatedly reaching for a phone can interrupt the experience.

That reasoning led APOM to prioritize tours and translation. Chen wants users to see the glasses as useful travel equipment, rather than a device with many features that do little well.

Connecting photography, translation, and tours

Photography, translation, and AI-generated answers are not unique to L’Atitude 52°N. APOM’s aim is to make them work together throughout a trip.

It starts with the camera. AI glasses typically use cameras mainly to give models a view of the objects in front of the wearer. Image quality has been a lower priority, partly because frames leave little room for large sensors or complex optics.

L’Atitude 52°N pairs a 12-megapixel camera module with a dedicated AI imaging chip, in addition to the usual system-on-chip and image processing hardware. According to Chen, pressing the shutter on the frame lets the chip identify the scene and optimize texture, edges, noise, color, and light and shadow in real time.

He said the chip improves low-light images of buildings, streets, and natural scenery, while reducing noise, flicker, and wind noise in recordings. The team is trying to transfer the smartphone industry’s computational photography experience to the smaller, more constrained format of glasses.

The AI-guided tour function builds on what the wearer sees. In a museum, historic district, or city attraction, users can tap the arm of the glasses to identify an artwork or building and hear an explanation through open-ear speakers.

To make answers more specific, APOM built a knowledge base covering art, historic buildings, and cultural subjects. Its tour guide uses retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, to draw on that material when composing responses.

The AI guide is called Goya, after the Spanish painter Francisco Goya. It is intended to explain not only what an artwork is, but why it was created and what makes it worth seeing.

Live translation addresses more immediate interactions: ordering food, asking for directions, or checking into accommodation. These exchanges may be simple, but language barriers can disrupt a trip.

A five-microphone array captures the wearer’s voice, the other speaker, and surrounding sound. APOM developed voice-separation and environmental noise-reduction algorithms to reduce the chance of unrelated sounds being mistaken for speech in noisy settings.

According to 36Kr, the system is also intended to combine APOM’s new audio compression algorithm with Google’s Gemini 3.5 Live Translate voice model for real-time streaming. The approach uses context to adjust meaning and phrasing, aiming for more natural conversation than word-for-word translation.

Together, the functions let travelers record what they see from their own perspective, ask AI to explain unfamiliar sights, and hear translations when speaking with someone in another language.

APOM has also built an intercom into a glasses strap. It is designed to let groups of travelers connect automatically and stay in touch where mobile reception is weak. Attaching the strap to the rings at the ends of the glasses’ arms activates built-in sensors and pairs it with the glasses, without a separate power-on step or manual device search.

According to APOM, the glasses are designed to withstand drops of about 1.8 meters and meet IP65 dust and water resistance requirements. A one-piece injection-molded front frame reduces the number of joins and potential points for water to enter.

Designing the frames and charging case

Chen recognized that a team with a smartphone background needed to better understand conventional eyewear, including style, face shapes, and fit.

He made repeated trips to Germany to find people with years of experience in the eyewear industry. The collaboration eventually settled into a division of work: teams in Germany and Italy handled style, aesthetics, and conventional eyewear fit, while the Shenzhen team took responsibility for electronics, structural engineering, software, and volume production.

Their priorities sometimes clashed. The European teams thought some frames were too thick or the colors looked unnatural. The Shenzhen team needed space for cameras, batteries, and circuitry. The task was to balance components, structural strength, and frame proportions.

The team produced nearly 100 prototypes and used feedback from European wearers to settle on three frame styles: Berlin, Antwerp, and Milan.

Shape and fit were only part of the design. A travel product also needed a way to store and charge it on the move. Smart glasses contain delicate electronics, need power, and require more protection from compression, impacts, and moisture than ordinary eyewear. APOM wanted a protective case that complemented the glasses’ design.

The case has a transparent shell that also conveys information: users can check the glasses’ charging status without opening it, and a shake reveals the case’s remaining battery level.

Chen told 36Kr that the inspiration came from a lunchbox whose contents can be seen through the lid: users can tell whether it holds chicken and rice or pork ribs and rice without opening it.

The case has no separate button. Its internal lights turn on when the glasses are placed inside, showing that charging has begun. That interaction was inspired by a Squid Game-themed transit card on which a character’s eyes light up after a successful tap.

L’Atitude 52°N said it is shifting from crowdfunding to retail, but sustaining the business will ultimately depend on whether travelers remain engaged with the glasses, use their features regularly, and believe they are worth the price.

KrASIA features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Qiu Xiaofen for 36Kr.

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