Wearable computer technology has been around for a while and we’ve more recently seen some pretty impressive innovations with the likes of Google Glass which will make its way to developers next year. The technology isn’t quite ready for the average consumer, but more experimental versions have been out for years and more for the engineer types.
Motorola Solutions has been working on their own wearable technology with the HC1 which is designed for those in the defense, aerospace, aviation, utilities, and telecommunications industry. It’s not as attractive as Google Glass, however, it’s not supposed to be attractive in the first place.
The setup is based on the Golden-i by Kopin and has some decent specs to get the job done.
- Heads up micro-display running at 800 x 600 which is said to look like a 15 inch panel
- 800MHZ OMAP3 dual-core processor which is very power efficient
- Windows CE 6.0 professional with custom speech recognition engine
- WiFi b/g, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, USB, 9-axis head-tracking accelerometer with digital compass
As far as the twin noise-canceling microphones, one can talk with someone remotely while also being able to share photos and videos, not to mention navigate through the OS with voice commands. Also, there’s a removable USB camera that can take two megapixel photos and shoot 1080p video.
No WiFi? No problem. It can work with mobile hotspots or be tethered via Bluetooth with select Motorola phones. The price for all of this? $4,000 to $5,000. Not cheap, but not your average, everyday piece of technology either.