Google Glass app will give you real time captioning on the screen

For the hearing impaired, researchers at Georgia Tech University have come up with a Google Glass application that allows real time captioning on the connected specs. The Glasswearer gives his paired smartphone to the other person in the conversation, who uses it as a microphone. Thanks to a "Captions on Glass" app installed on both the phone and Google Glass, almost instantaneously a transcription appears on the wearable, allowing the hearing impaired party to keep up with the conversation.

As cool as that sounds, the researchers are working on a way to immediately translate and caption different languages such as English, Spanish, French, Russian, Korean or Japanese. Imagine how much easier conversations will be using this application, which will be found in the Google Play Store in a matter of weeks. The app is installed on an Android phone and the translated caption is transmitted to Google Glass.


The only drawback with this process, is giving a stranger your smartphone to talk into. The microphone on Glass is designed to pick up the wearer's voice, so it is not sensitive enough for this task. If you trust someone to hold your handset, this could be a very useful application for Google Glass, proving that the device does have a reason to exist besides taking creepy spy shots of people you don't know. And yes, a version of the app for iOS is being developed.


source: GeorgiaTech via CNET