Waverly Labs Pilot – The World’s First Smart Earpiece Language Translator
A New York City- Manhattan based company by the name of Waverly Labs is close to realizing one of our fantasies into reality. Their device is in the news for developing the world’s first smart earpiece language translator.
Waverly Labs has been working on the idea and this project was named as Pilot that works to understand anyone no matter irrespective of the language they speak. There are other apps like Google Translate in the market that is already doing a good job but this new wearable is planning to make translation effortless and instantaneous. It looks rather like a large Bluetooth earpiece and in fact, can be used as earbuds for streaming wireless music, but its real function is to translate the language that you hear in spoken form.
How does the Pilot work?
The Waverly Labs pilot is a smart earpiece which uses dual noise-cancelling microphones to filter out ambient noise from the speech. The speech is then passed through the smartphone app for layers of speech recognition and translation. This earpiece listens to a conversation and communicates with your smartphone to give you a close-to-real-time translation.
A mobile app is used to download language packs and toggle the language within the earpiece, it doesn’t need to rely on an internet connection to work. This device allows the wearer to hear the basic translation of multiple languages in their native tongue. Waverly Labs is striving to put this stuff into a wearable device that it effectively “whispers” the translation into the listener’s ear. Incredible, isn’t it?
Features of the Waverly Labs Pilot
- Pilot allows two people to communicate using two completely different languages and still clearly understand each other.
- It can translate live speech at the same moment.
- It uses “translation technology” and is connected to an app on your phone, which works offline.
- The ear pieces can also be used as wireless headphones for listening to music.
- There are various voice assistant apps that give Pilot more material to help improve its machine learning algorithms.
- The Pilot ships with the main unit for translation and the second unit for stereo music streaming.
- It also has a portable battery charger and an app that toggles the languages between the earpiece for translation.
- Pilot uses the latest technologies in speech recognition, machine translation and the advances of wearable technology to give better performance.
- Additional languages will be offered as downloadable packs with business solutions available on a license model.
Price and Availability
The first languages which will be available when the Waverly Labs Pilot is delivered in May 2017 will be English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. Waverly Labs intends to launch a pre-order campaign with the wearable selling for $300. You will get a pair of earpieces, so you can use both to listen to music. The price includes a wireless earbud which can be used for music, a charging case and some languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian currently supported). This device will be available in three colors white, black and red models in glossy and matte finishes – but, like we said, a nice fit is more important in sales viewpoint.
Our Verdict
With the preparations going on for its launch, this device could be a serious game-changer in the realm of modern, real-time communication. Is real-time translation technology ready to make the leap into the big time? This innovation by Waverly Labs Pilot suggests that the language barrier may finally be broken. A small startup, with enough cash and talent will be worth to watch out for, soon!
Keval Padia is the founder & CEO of Nimblechapps, a fast-growing mobile app development company. The current innovation and updates of the field lures him to express his views and thoughts on certain topics.