Earlier this year, Hagrid from Harry Potter got lost in our closet and rather than call security, my wife had a hell of a time getting him out.
This is the new normal. In the future, characters from popular fandoms will appear in our closets overnight and struggle to get free while we laugh and look for the button where we can poke them with sticks.
Most people know augmented reality (AR) from the interactive video-game crowd.
Full disclosure: I refused to play Harry Potter: Wizard’s Unite and Pokemon Go because I am a grown-ass man, but I played Ingress for almost an entire summer.
To date, AR has been for kids. But the folks at Vuzix (VUZI.Q) know it’s often a dark world out there—far darker than anything dreamed by J.K. Rowling, or whatever weirdo came up with Pokemon.
Vuzix Corporation is a supplier of smart glasses and AR tech and products for both the consumer and enterprise markets. The company holds 147 different patents and patents pending and numerous IP licenses in the video eyewear field. The company has won the consumer electronics show awards for innovation for the years 2005 to 2019, and several wireless technology innovation awards.
The products include personal display and wearable computing devices. Basically, they’re ugly black sunglasses that put on a visual display for the wearer. Think Cold War era mirrorshades with a heads-up display worn by high tech security guards from the future.
Also, the technology isn’t anything we haven’t seen before.
For example, Snap (SNAP.Q) put out theirs earlier this year. There’s also Google’s abysmal attempt at co-opting your privacy, which is also being pushed out to businesses this year. The difference between their offerings and Vuzik’s Blade Smart Glasses is that it comes with a SWORD, and is not for kids.
SWORD is a mobile IoT threat detection device built for the Apple iPhone 8 Plus and iPad Pro. It’s able to use a combination of AI, mmWave and thermal imaging sensor fusion technology to detect concealed weapons, including 3D printed ones, and explosives. It uses facial recognition scans, accesses proprietary cloud-based database, and is capable of locating gunfire in a matter of seconds. It’s definitely more than your average security kit, because the glasses add a opaque display that will allow security to quickly and inconspicuously receive threat notifications in real time through a scanning device.
“Vuzix Blade Smart Glasses are the ideal wearable solution to pair with our SWORD Enterprise solution as the see-through smart glasses allow our customers to stay engaged with their environment, while also simultaneously receiving critical alerts related to safety threats from near or across the building from the SWORD detection system,” said Barry Oberholzer, founder and CEO of SWORD.
Present security customers include professional sporting arenas, public safety providers, banks, public schools, airports, federal agencies and telecommunications providers. More than 88,000 pre-orders have been placed by government agencies, airport and concert venue firms according to Oberholzer.
The company is compliant with all privacy regulations, and stores their facial recognition software and data on private cloud servers which are not accessible to other companies, or governments. Naturally, read your EULA, because there’s always a catch. Maybe it’s the $3,500 price tag.
Maybe not. How much is your security worth?
—Joseph Morton
