If your idea of future is something like The Island, then perhaps uniformed fashion and geeky looking smart glasses are OK. The truth is, wearing a high-tech looking glasses is not in sync with many’s fashion sense and it also make others around feel uncomfortable for the facts that you may not be listening to them, or you may be secret filming them. Perhaps that is why smart glasses did not really take off despite the technology is there to mass produce them for consumers. However, that may change with Intel Vaunt Smart Glasses. With Vaunt, Intel has finally wiped the dreadful high-tech look off smart glasses and present to us, a really normal looking glasses.
In fact, it is so normal that you won’t even suspect that it is a pair of smart glasses. Thanks to the in-house developed technology, Intel is able to shrink down the components and integrate it inconspicuously to the temple. Using a technology called Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser, a very low-level class one laser, Vaunt projects information in red monochrome on the glass which then reflects it directly onto the user’s retina to realize an image of 400 x 150 pixels. Since it does that, the info presented will always be sharp whether or not if the user wears a prescription glasses.
There is no clunky LCD, nor is there a camera to make you look like a spying big brother (or pervert) or a cyborg being from the future. It is just an ordinary looking pair of glasses with virtually no hint of it being a pair of smart glasses. But without camera, it is pretty much limited to providing heads-up notifications and information. Another brilliant feature is, it does not require awkward, hey-look-at-me gestures to pick up notifications and info. Discreet head movements that seem all so natural will allow you to do, for examples, read or dismiss text messages.
So, what use does it have? Well, this thing is AI-driven and is kind of self-aware in the sense that it will know where you are and/or what you are doing and providing useful information. Such as, for example, when you are on a streets lined with restaurants, it will be able to advice you on which restaurants has the highest rating on Yelp. Another example would be looking through your to-buy list while grocery shopping without fumbling with your smartphone. It is probably not going to replace smartphones, well, at least not in near future, but it will exist as a solution to getting info without having to reach for our smartphone.
Now, before you get too excited about this new gadget, you will have to know that it is not ready for you and me. Intel will be opening up access to developers for them to discover what they can do with Vaunt. In other words, it will be a while until it realises, if it even realize at all.
Images: The Verge.
via YouTube.
