Augmented Reality: Tele Scouter

The Japanese consumer electronics company NEC have unveiled something seriously cool. You probably know how excited I got about Nokia's recent Augmented Reality concept, and even the slightly more bizarre Augmented Reality Contact Lenses I recently wrote about, but this is a practical everyday application of AR that actually works, and that's better then anything concept.

Meet the NEC Tele Scouter...


The Tele Scouter is NEC's Augmented Reality glasses, which project real-time language translation directly into people's eyes!

The system translates conversations in real time, and projects the translations directly onto a user's retina as a stream of 'subtitles'. Using built in voice recognition,the self-contained translation programme allows you to complete cut out the need for human translators. The system is also capable of delivering audio translations. Tele is due for release in Japan next November, and will be sold (initially at least) in packs of 30, at a cost of €65,000.