Gadzooki

Sony to develop “subtitle” glasses

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Watching movies has increasingly become accessible to the deaf because of subtitling. It is now a standard feature in DVDs and blurays and even downloadable video content has the option of getting subtitles either as a built in feature or downloading a separate subtitle file. But subtitling is not just within the realm of digital media. There are many theaters now that offer a subtitling service for those who need it.

The current system revolves around the use of a glass screen that is placed in front of the person, the glass then reflects text from a pixel board that is mounted at the back of the theater. This is an effective way of providing subtitles in theaters to those who need it but the difficulty of this solution is that those who want to get subtitles will have to seat themselves in a specific area in the theater to make sure that they get to see the subtitles.

Sony realized the limitation of this problem and has developed a new technology to provide subtitles to people who need them. The prototype are a pair of glasses that a person can wear when watching a #D movie. But the technology here is far different. The glasses allow for the subtitles to be projected on to the glass you are wearing, so this means the viewer can sit anywhere he wants to and still get to see the subtitles. The subs appear like it is part of the screen, which is a cool effect. Sony is still developing the glasses but expect the final product to look slimmer and svelte.

Glasses for the Socially Challenged

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Glasses

Glasses that can read your mind?

So you have problems interacting with people face to face. You are not alone. There are countless people out there who seem to have issues conversing with others. Whether it is because they are shy or it is because they seem to say the wrong things (and not even realize it), it can be a painful thing to see other people turn away from you.

If you have always had the problem of NOT being a good conversationalist, have you ever stopped to think that it could be due to the fact that you are not skilled at reading what other people think or how they react to what you are saying? After all, conversation is also about being able to read the person on the other end.

Enter Rosalind Picard of MIT and Rana el Kaliouby of the University of Cambridge, UK. These two individuals have worked to help the socially challenged people of the universe. (Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the driving idea behind the project.)

Their work has resulted in a pair of glasses with an embedded chip and camera. These two things work together to analyze facial expressions of the person that you are talking to. Upon analysis, the system will give you feedback via some LED lights that are also part of the glasses. Green for “you’re doing a good job conversing” and red for “you’re being a social fail”. Now if you want more audible feedback, you can wear headphones which will sum up the data as well. What you do with the feedback – that is totally up to you!

Analysis is all about the facial cues and other non-verbal cues that people have when conversing. In many cases, we learn all about these cues and take our lead from them. One issue I am seeing here is the fact that different cultures will have different cues. It seems, though, that the creators are already working on software that will recognize Japanese cues. That leaves a gazillion other cultures.

In any case, the concept behind the glasses are pretty cool, but unfortunately, we can’t buy them from the nearest accessories shop yet.

Note: The image shown above is NOT the glasses Picard and al Kaliouby have created.

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Photo courtesy of Emily Gieczewski