Glasses that Actually Increase Intelligence: The Tele Scouter

by Gordon Clark | November 5, 2009 at 11:52 am

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If the cliched stereotype that smart people always wear glasses isn't enough no they have glasses that very literally make you smarter. Japanese technology company NEC has developed the Tele Scouter, a pair of glasses that display text on a person's retina and translates between languages in the attached headphones. The Tele Scouter was originally developed as a sort of sixth sense where a camera and audio recorder would recognize people and though a database could display other in-depth information on a person through its earphones and retina text display. The Tele Scouter has evolved into operating in numerous languages and providing a translation function.

The brilliant glasses have two main features:

Audio - The Tele Scouter's microphone can receive a person talking in a different language and present it in your language.
Visual - The glasses' camera can acknowledge a person or something and "get text subtitles [about that person or thing] beamed onto the retina" which can be either translated language text or information regarding a person or company.

NEC said the Tele Scouter would be launched in Japan in November, 2010 but would initially lack the translation feature. A version that can provide subtitles would follow in 2011, it said.

When it goes on sale, a batch of 30 headsets will cost about 7.5m yen (£50,000). The cost does not include the price of the translation tools and software.