Here’s an innovative, simple, and exciting application to Google Glasses: foreign language augmented reality that translates text like real-life subtitles. Technology MacGyver Will Powell assembled a working concept of the product from a list of consumer electronics, and demonstrated it in a video of himself in conversation with his sister. Check out the video below. We’ve also pasted his description of the convoluted process the product takes to translate, below the video.
“The individual using the glasses be wears the Vuzix 1200 Star glasses which are connected to the s-video connector on the first raspberry pi and the Jawbone bluetooth microphone that connects to a device such as smartphone or tablet to provide a clean noise cancelled audio feed. The bluetooth microphone streams across the network of what I say and what it picks up around me. This is then recognised and passed through Microsoft’s translation API with a caching layer to improve performance of regularly used statements. Passing through this API service is the biggest delay in the subtitles. Once translated the server passes back the text and translations that are picked up by the raspberry pi driving the TV and glasses displays. Elizabeth uses a headset mic but could user her own raspberry pi, glasses and jawbone microphone to have the same experience as I do.”