Brother Industries developed the RID by applying optical system technologies based on their laser printing technology, and piezoelectric technologies based on their ink-jet printing technology. The device enables you to see a transparent display of RID images without affecting the visual field, giving the impression of a 16 square inch screen viewed 1 meter ahead.

That provides users an opportunity to view private images and confidential data anywhere. Unlike the developers from NEC, these guys noted they developed this system in order to enable users to read documents such as operation manuals at the narrow spaces, or to be hands-free when they want to use both hands.

Brother created an attraction for demonstrating a stationary type RID at EXPO 2005 in Aichi, Japan. In 2008, Brother succeeded in developing a spectacle-type wearable RID prototype. The newest prototype clears the conventional assignment of practical application by downsizing a power source box which stores light source modules. Its size is approx. 95×170×30mm and it weights only 350g. The system consists of three modules: a light source module, an optical scanning module, and an eyepiece module.

Light source module requires laser light sources of the light’s three primary colors: red, green and blue, to view images in full color. Brother used a green solid state laser for the previous prototypes since a green laser diode was not in practical use.  Therefore, it was difficult to downsize the light source module and this was a big hurdle for the commercialization. However, Brother succeeded in downsizing the light source module by adopting a green laser diode for the first time in the world. It is able to show SVGA resolution (800×600) with a 60Hz frame rate.

An optical scanning module and an eyepiece module were already downsized by applying optical scanning system technologies based on the laser printing technologies. Brother has been developing piezoelectric MEMS technologies based on its ink-jet printing technology. With this technology, it successfully developed in-house an optical MEMS scanner (high-speed scanning mirror device), with world-class operating frequency, to create clear images.

The Tele Scouter glasses (page in Japanese language) feature a compact microphone and camera, which picks up the foreign-language conversation. This audio recording is then relayed to a small computer worn on the user’s waist, which transmits the information to a remote server. The server translates the words from speech to text, and transmits it back to the glasses, where the translated phrase is then appears on a tiny retinal display, providing the wearer with a transcript of the conversation in their own language.

The system is designed to be compact and lightweight, so it can be comfortably worn for long periods. The retinal display projects the text in the wearer’s peripheral vision, enabling the user to maintain eye contact with whoever they’re speaking to. The developers claim its battery power consumption is low, so it is able to work in long intervals.

The Tele Scouter is currently still a prototype, although NEC plans to start selling the system to businesses next year. The Japanese manufacturer admits that the device’s translation capabilities are limited at the moment, so the device will be marketed as a wearable, hands-free data display. NEC predicts that it could be used by engineers and technicians to view user guides or manuals while installing and repairing hardware.

On the other hand, they also predicted the price for this hip gadget, and it won’t be anything near to accessible (Tele Scouter system capable of supporting up to 30 users will cost nearly $8.5M). Its design isn’t great either, even the similarly looking pair of glasses from Brother (we’re going to write about those in our next article) is a bit sleeker, but still far from looking good.

The concept of glasses meant for translating isn’t great either. If they do develop such an algorithm, they should implement it into text-to-speech software with ability to adjust the volume and the voice color of the translation. With the progress of the technology and computing power, we could be looking at the first versions of universal translators, but we are currently not even close to their realization. They should focus their translation plans on that field, and develop their glasses to display augmented reality or enhanced relevant information of the world around us.