Sony’s smart spectacles are similar to Google Glass, the smart specs already on sale. They’re nowhere near as elegant as the wire-frame Google Glass, looking more like a pair of unwieldy 3D glasses than the unobtrusive Glass, and they sit slightly proud of your face — in their current form, the Sony specs are a pair of conspicuous goggles rather than a wearable people won’t notice you’re wearing. The prototype to the device was first seen at CES 2014 and Sony today released the software development kit (SDK) so that developers can create apps for the device when hardware is made available in March next year. The Smart EyeGlass differs from Google Glass in the way it relays information. Sony’s alternative uses a green 8bit monochrome display to relay information on top of the user’s general field of vision. It will act as a secondary output for the wearer’s smartphone. The device needs an Android smartphone and a separate application to sync the mobile phone and can push notifications, display messages and emails, click photos or provide navigation assistance. In terms of hardware the Sony Smart EyeGlass comes with a fitted with a 3 megapixel camera instead of the 5 megapixel camera on Google Glass.
Sony’s suggestions for Smart EyeGlass include showing you a recipe as you cook, keeping your hands free to stir and season, getting rid of the need to turn pages in a recipe book with sauce-enstickened hands. And when you’re out and about it offers you augmented reality, overlaying useful information over the real-world view in front of you. Sensors in the specs can tell which way you’re facing and track the movements of your head so the information in the head-up display corresponds with what you’re actually looking at. The system is linked to your phone via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, so the glasses could potentially tie into your contacts and use facial recognition to identify people you meet. There’s a touchpad on the remote and a camera button to fire the camera that’s built into the glasses themselves — but the main reason for the remote is to house the battery, which in this version is too big to wear on your face. You can at least control the glasses by speaking, with apps recognizing your voice commands. But the mic is in the remote. Still, it’s only a prototype. And Sony does say that eventually the glasses will scan your eye movements to scroll through the information on the screen.
