The potential applications for the sonar glasses are wide-ranging. They could be used to control music playback in quiet environments, dictate messages in noisy settings where other options would fail, or even assist people with speech disabilities by feeding dialogue into a voice synthesizer. The researchers are also exploring commercialization options through Cornell’s funding program and are looking into applications of smart glasses to track facial, eye, and upper body movements.
“We’re very excited about this system because it really pushes the field forward on performance and privacy,” said Cheng Zhang. “It’s small, low-power, and privacy-sensitive, which are all important features for deploying new, wearable technologies in the real world.” The team at Cornell’s Smart Computer Interfaces for Future Interactions (SciFi) Lab sees great potential in using glass as a personal computing platform to understand human activities in everyday settings.
