Looking like glasses but without lenses, the headset has a tiny projector which displays images on the user’s retina. NEC said they were planning a style which used real-time translation to provide subtitles for communications between people without a common language.
According to NEC the product, known as Tele Scouter, was for use by sales people or employees handling enquiries from customers. It is intended to be a business tool helping staff obtain information about a client’s buying history which can be beamed into their eye whilst speaking to the client.
In the future, it could also be used as a translation aid whereby the microphone on the headset picks up both voices in a conversation, transmits them through translation software and voice-to-text systems and sends the translation to the headset. Therefore as a user hears a translation, the subtitled text would be beamed onto their retina.
A spokesman for NEC said the system could also be used for confidential talks, which would avoid the need for a human translator.
It is intended to launch Tele Scouter in Japan in 2010, initially without the translation software with a version providing subtitles being launched in 2011.