Pilot

Pilot

Category	Other Head-mounted Devices
Developer	Waverly Labs Inc. ^[1]
Announced	May 2016 ^[2]
Released	Developers: (unknown) Consumers: May 2017 ^[2]^[3]
Price	299 USD (June 2016)^[4]
Operating system	none (requires smartphone)
Sensors	microphone ^[3]
Weight	g (unknown)
Controls	smartphone ^[5]
Data available	Limited
Risk factor	Low
Not Standalone
http://www.waverlylabs.com/#features

Pilot is a wearable ear piece that offers nearly instantaneous translation to and from various languages. The ear pieces communicate with each other through the provided smartphone app and translates what the user is saying to a chosen foreign language which the other Pilot device plays to the user's communication partner. The device supports English, Spanish, French, Italian, and other latin and romance languages. Support for additional languages is planned after the release of the device.^[4]

The device is still under development and it's release is planned on around May 2017.

Main characteristics

The device is a plastic, wireless ear piece that sits just on the outside of the user's ear canal. The piece is equipped with a stereo speaker and two noise cancelling microphones. It has a Lithium-ion battery that lasts for up to 6 hours of operation.

To function, the device has to be paired to a smartphone with the provided app installed via Bluetooth. Then, a second Pilot ear piece has to be paired with the smartphone again. This allows two Pilot users to communicate with each other while the Pilot app translates their speech. By itself, the ear piece has no computing power on it's own and relies on the smartphone app to do the translation. This does not require constant Internet access as the translation is done offline on the phone.^[4]

The company admits that it takes a few moments for the program to do the translation, but informs that they want to improve the time before the release. It also stated, that the machine translation is not perfect but the quality of it will improve the more people use the device.^[3]

Please note that this information was taken from the company's IndieGoGo campaign and it is likely that the indicated hardware specifications will change before the actual release.

Purpose

The purpose of Pilot is to give it's users the ability to speak with someone whose language they do not speak. The device expands the ability to communicate across language boundaries, provided that both parties have the device.