Even though Google Glass enjoys its fair share of airtime in the world of tech, the search giant’s head-mounted gizmo isn’t alone in vying for a share of this potentially lucrative field. In fact, a number of companies – from start-ups to the likes of Lenovo – have indulged over the past couple of years, but while the more recent Motorola-owner’s prototype looked a bit of a Glass rip-off, the product in the works through emerging outfit Atheer Labs is very intriguing and dare we say more exciting than even Glass.
The Atheer One face computer managed to scoop around $200,000 through crowdfunding – around double the initial goal – and although the company has, quite literally, set its sights on the enterprise market, it also intends to hit the consumer side in the not so distant future.
Many critiques of Glass et al have noted that any market intentions are misplaced at this time, because there’s simply no necessity for such technologies to hit the mainstream. Certainly, through the Beta Explorer program of Google’s, we’ve seen numerous firms and governmental bodies trialing Glass with varied success, but as for day-to-day consumers, the jury’s still very much out.
Still, this is not to say that there won’t be a shift in the future, and meanwhile, Atheer is dead-set on ensuring that its wearable range is fit for purpose as far as enterprise is concerned.
The company heeded the responses of backers through the aforementioned campaign on IndieGogo and decided to stick with enterprise for the time being, and as Soulaiman Itani, co-founder and Chief Scientist at Atheer Labs noted in an interview with Business Insider, the company will find it much easier to tweak software and hardware to suit specific fields rather than trying to build a device that does a little bit of everything.
Interaction with the One is done through gestures. Wearers see a tablet-like interface in their line of sight that they can readily access through air-based gestures, and with support for 3D imaging to boot, this is a very, very interesting and exciting piece of kit.
Sure, a bit of work may need to be done on the wearable’s form factor, but with Itani clearly having a strong, dedicated team behind him, Atheer Labs will certainly be one to look out for over the next few years.
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