Sony has unveiled a new clip-on display unit that will attach to the frame of any eyewear and transform it into a pair of smart glasses in the mode of Google Glass.
The accessory incorporates a control board with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi along with a compass, accelerometer and touch sensors. It’s powered by an ARM Cortex-A7 processor and shows information via a 640×400 OLED micro-display.
As with Google Glass, the display hovers in front of your eye. Sony says it’ll offer a field of view equivalent to a 16 inch display placed 2 meters in front of you.
The whole package weighs in at under 2 ounces. Sony’s pitching it as useful for sports, work and entertainment and says it will offer an SDK for third-party app developers.
Sony’s showing off the device at CES in the form of a concept model with the slightly silly name “SmartEyeglass Attach!”. Sony’s aiming to put the unit into mass production later in the year so it should be on sale by 2016.
Being able to easily remove the device and add it to any eyewear you fancy could give Sony’s set up an advantage over Google Glass, but it’ll still have to overcome the creepy factor and other people’s wariness about folks in smart glasses.
We should see the new version of Google Glass next year too, reportedly in collaboration with Intel.
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