Look out Google Glass. Look out all you want. These glasses from Japan look inward!

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jins-meme

The latest in wearable tech from Japan is an interesting contrast with Google Glass. Instead of scanning the world around you for useful data, ‘Jins Meme’ glasses look back only at yourself in an effort to collect useful data from your eyes and the areas around them, monitoring blinking, blink duration, vision shifts and more. The glasses are scheduled to go on sale next spring, with a public API coming in the fall. For Jins’ own explation of the concept, check out the promo video from Jins, which we’ve included above [1]. Update: Looks like Jins has made the YouTube video private suddenly.

The data will sync with an accompanying smartphone app which lets you review important info at any time. Here’s an excerpt from the product’s webpage that nicely sums up the value proposition of the system:

Based on changes in eye movement, JINS MEME is able to determine levels of mental and physical tiredness, which many people are unable to notice on their own. Recovery rates from tiredness in humans drop dramatically once a certain threshold is crossed. JINS MEME can detect and alert you to those levels before reaching that point, providing a new kind of management tool for preventing tiredness from accumulating and for improving work efficiency.

In addition to electrooculography (or eye motion) sensors, the device will also be equipped with a three-axis accelerometer and a three-axis gyro sensor. So even when you are active or exercising, Jins Meme can help you monitor how many calories you’ve burned, or even feedback on your speed or posture.

Jins Meme will come in three styles, the classic ‘Wellington’ style, a half-rim style, and sunglasses. The glasses will certainly benefit from the added advantage of being rather stylish, and not making the wearer look like a tech-augmented cyborg.

On a somewhat related note, our readers will likely be familiar with Japan’s other notable glasses tech ‘Telepathy’ from the creator of Sekai Camera. As for Google Glass, it was recently discovered via code in its latest apk file that localized Japanese commands are soon on the way. So we can expect to see a battle for user eyeballs not to far in the future here in Japan! [2]

car-view
The Jins Meme app, alerting you while driving

  1. It’s an unlisted video that we’ve gone and embedded, so Jins could disable it at any time. Apologies in advance if they do. Update: And it looks like they have.  ↩

  2. Since these glasses serve an entirely different function than Google Glass, many would argue that Jins Meme is not a Glass competitor. But I would assert that since one cannot wear two pairs of glasses at once, that any pair of glasses is a competitor for any other pair of glasses.  ↩