epson glasses

Thalmic labsEpson, best know for their printers and projectors, was one of several companies at the 2014 International CES to show off a Google Glass competitor. While the Epson Moverio BT-100 (above) is in the same broad category as Glass, there are some major differences between the two. The Epson is much more of a media consumption device than Glass. Think of it as being somewhere between the Oculus Rift and Glass.

Epson just released some news that will make the new model, the Moverio BT-200, pretty remarkable. Here is how the news was broken:

This [New Moverio BT-200 application] is the first smart glasses app integrating the Myo gesture control armband from Y-Combinator alumnus Thalmic Labs. With the Myo wearable device and Moverio, a user makes a fist to ‘grab’ data streams and then moves their arms to relocate the data wherever they wish in their field of view – enabling a transparent, virtual 3D desktop on top of the user’s real-world environment.

Moving beyond the gestural computing made famous in the futuristic movie, “Minority Report” where the characters are tied to hardware displays when accessing information gesturally, users can walk around with the Moverio smart glasses and view multiple data windows anywhere.1

The Myo armband is pretty awesome on its own. Check out this quick video of the armband in action:

Wild stuff. By combining both the Moverio BT-200 and the Myo armband, some incredible possibilities emerge. The release likened the combination to the film “Minority Report,” which seems about right. Anyhow, here is another short video showing the Myo and the Moverio BT-200 in action together: