One of the richest men in the world and co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin, has been snapped on a New York subway train wearing his company's new augmented reality glasses.

Augmented reality could be the next frontier in consumer electronics, and Google is one of several companies leading the charge in bringing the technology to the market.

Google's own A/R project is known as Google Glass and is akin to an interactive point-of-view camera connected to the Internet - a pair of sunglasses which can interact with the world around it as well as make phone calls.

The picture was snapped by New Yorker Noah Zerkin, who immediately sent it out on Twitter.

"Yeeeah... I just had a brief conversation with the most powerful man in the world. On the downtown 3 train. Nice guy," said Zerkin, before posting the pic of a casual looking Brin sporting the glasses.

When asked whether Brin was actually using the glasses at the time, Zerkin said he probably wasn't.

"I'd bet that even Mr. Brin has to deal with being offline on the NYC subway," he said.

Brin, who is valued at $17bn, first showcased Glass at Google's I/O conference in June last year and promised they'd be available in 2013 for $1,500, according to The Next Web.

That price range puts it out of the hands of the masses. However, developers are now able to start creating apps for it, which could lead to more investment from Google and eventually a much more affordable price point.

Google's main rivals, Microsoft and Apple, are also working on A/R glasses.