Motorola Solutions announced today that Appear, a Swedish vendor of mobile application platforms, along with with Ryerson University’s Flybits, a Canadian research and development group, today received a Golden-idea Award from Motorola for augmented reality software for a wearable computer designed to be used by security guards and law enforcement. The hardware is Motorola’s own Golden-i bluetooth headset that is touch free and includes a virtual reality screen in front of one eye.
According to their press release, the software they’ve developed for the device revolutionizes the way a security agent or a police officer can interact with computers and and receive information about his surroundings. For example, the agent can automatically and hands-free receive maps with specific points of interest related to his current location, display alerts from motion sensors, call video feeds from nearby surveillance cameras and even remotely trigger lights or sirens in specific parts of a building.
It sounds to futuristic to be practical, but they seem to have put out a solid proof of concept. I’m not sure how large the market is for security companies that have the resources to wirelessly tap into security cams, let alone remote lights and sirens, yet its probably the most useful adaptation of the Golden-i hardware I’ve seen.
Appear claims to have pioneered the field of context-aware software ten years ago. Their vision is to leverage user context in order to ensure mobile users have the information they need, when and where they need it. The company is not afraid of getting into fields such as human-machine interfaces, machine-to-machine communication, context-aware computing and cross-platform mobile infrastructures, always delivering the ideal software infrastructure able to support the next generation of smart devices and smart objects.
Perhaps, like Robocop, these headsets and software will help law enforcement clean up a crime ridden Detroit in the near future. Imagine a world where you could be pulled over for speeding, then the cop would say to you “Excuse me, I have to go. Somewhere there is a crime happening.”
Here’s a video explaining their product. If you skip ahead to 2:40 you can check out the product in action.
