At CES in Las Vegas, HERE and Vuzix today unveiled a programme to let developers create location applications for the M100 Smart Glasses.
When we created HERE, we had a vision of providing location intelligence across every screen. This is why our technology is included in Samsung Gear S; it’s in our smartphone apps for Windows Phone, Android and soon iOS; it’s in millions of cars including those connected to Internet like the BMW i3; highly autonomous vehicles like the Mercedes S500 and it’s included in enterprise applications using SAP HANA, ESRI GIS and our own enterprise APIs.
But we didn’t want to stop there: we know that maps are essential for almost any kind of hardware today. So we partnered with Vuzix to bring our location intelligence to smart glasses for everyone, but most importantly, to industrial, medical, retail, materials management and other businesses.
Exactly two years ago, the Vuzix M100 won the CES Innovations 2013 Design and Engineering Award BEST OF INNOVATIONS, and was selected as Best Technology in the Wireless Handset Accessory category.
With the Vuzix M100, it’s like having an Android smartphone, without anything in your hands. Everything can be operated with a small screen in front of your eye and with gestures. It comes with its own pre-installed apps, and it’s compatible with thousands of existing Android apps, and developers can create custom apps to suit virtually any need.
This is where HERE comes into play. Developers can make use of the M100’s integrated head tracking, integration with Bluetooth beacons, and a GPS chip to get precise location information and the direction and angle of your current view for complete location awareness. And with our mapping technology, those developers can create advanced and fully integrated mapping apps for the M100.
Just like our apps for smartphones, custom-created apps for the M100 can make use of the following features:
Detailed maps for download
Online and offline drive and walk navigation in 118 countries
Online and offline route planning and search in nearly 200 countries
Online and offline public transit directions for more than 800 cities in more than 40 countries
Live traffic information for more than 40 countries
Most importantly, these apps can overlay custom data on top of our maps, to create location aware visualizations, a must-have for enterprise use cases.
In which work or life situation would you use the M100 Smart Glasses’ location capabilities? Let us know with your comments and Vuzix developers may pick up your idea.