A new startup called Waverly Labs, an innovative consumer electronics company created in 2014, claims a “smart” earpiece will reportedly be the world’s first gadget to translate between two users speaking different languages in real-time. The creators say it’s “intended for the Traveller, International Professional and Digital Nomad.”
The earpiece, dubbed the Pilot, is shaped similar to regular earbuds, but comes without any wires or cables. Pretty handy if you find yourself lost in a city without WiFi connection, or frantically trying to figure out which subway to take.
Using the latest technologies in speech recognition, machine translation and the advances of wearable technology, our smart earpiece allows wearers to speak different languages but still clearly understand each other. Simply put, when one person speaks, the other hears it in their language. Science fiction has called it many things, but we call it Pilot.”
The Pilot has so far raised over 3 million dollars via Indiegogo (launched May 15th, 2016, funded June 25th, 2016) and is estimated to ship worldwide May 2017. For now, the product comes with English, Spanish, French, and Italian, but other languages are on the way, including Arabic, Hindi, East Asian, and Slavic. Here are a few other cool features included:
- The Pilot is designed to hug the curves of the ear without being obtrusive, snug yet fashionable, and comes in three colors: red, black and white.
- The Pilot comes with a secondary earpiece for wireless streaming music, or to hare with the person you are speaking with.
- It’s accompanying smartphone app toggles between languages and uploads them to the earpiece when in use offline and overseas. For basic translation, the app can also be sued as a phrasebook.
- In conference mode, multiple people can wear the earpiece and join in on the same conversation, even if they’re all speaking different languages.
- In addition, the smartphone’s speakerphone can be used as a loudspeaker to transmit what you’re saying to everyone in the room.
The full package includes the Pilot and secondary earpiece (2 earpieces total), 1 portable charger, 3 different sized eartips for the perfect fit, and an accompanying app. The app is where the languages are downloaded for the earpiece.
The first generation of the device only works when speaking to another person who also has a Pilot earbud, but the company says that future versions will be able to translate from any surrounding spoken source.
The full retail price for the Pilot is expected to be $299, but the early bird special on Indiegogo starts at $199. The purchase will come with two earpieces in each pack, and additional languages will be available via downloadable language packs.
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