The Atheer developer kit has been released for $1,000 / €746

Jul 30, 2014 09:28 GMT  ·  By

Products such as Google Glass and Oculus Rift can be both placed in the wearable category, but there’s a big difference between them.

The Glass aims to help you breathe in as much of the real world as possible, while the Oculus Rift takes you out of reality into virtual wonderland.

But what if we told you that you could have the best of both universes? Well, it turns out you can. A Mountain View-based startup called Atheer Labs has taken it upon itself to build a pair of smart glasses that offer a little bit of Google Glass and a bit of Oculus Rift.

The company’s Chief Technology Officer, Allen Yang, used to be a researcher at UC Berkeley working in the computer vision and sensor networks department. He justifies the existence of the product by saying that sometimes people need to be in the physical world but need to be in the digital world as well.

In the vein of the Google Glass, the Atheer glasses offer an overlay of info complementing your experience of the real world, but they also let you manipulate digital fields by virtue of hand gestures.

This feature is achieved thanks to a built-in sensor capable of picking up the movement of your hand gestures, which include swiping left or right and clicking on a virtual button.

Compared to the Google Glass, the Antheer is a little bit chunkier, especially in the superior part, so if you think the Glass will make you look like you just stepped out of Robocop, take a look at the Antheer.

The Atheer glass project has been up on Indiegogo gathering funds ever since February and they managed to do so successfully, so the first enterprise-bound developer kits are ready to be shipped out to early adopters.

For the time being, the Atheer team is thinking of focusing efforts into developing industrial applications. Consider an example of this: a field worker who might be engaged in an activity that involves him/her using their hands might need to access a certain piece of information.

The startup has already identified a number of companies form the airspace and industrial ecosystem and they are currently talking to them.

The developer kit will set you back with $1,000 / €746 and is made up of the developer unit plus glasses. The standalone glasses sell for between $350 / €261 and $500 / €373.

Atheer Smart Glasses (5 Images)

Atheer smart glasses tackle reality and its virtual countepart
Atheer smart glasses tackle reality and its virtual countepartAtheer smart glasses tackle reality and its virtual countepart
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