The Wearable Tech Expo 2014 took place this week in Tokyo, where Recruit Technologies showcased its wearable device, Lily. By linking with your smartphone, the device notifies you when you receive a call or chat message from someone, when a friend is near by, or when you’ve accidentally left your smartphone behind somewhere. Wrist-type wearable devices can be generally categorized into two types. The Smartband type includes smart watches such as Pebble, Xperia Style, and Galaxy Gear. The Basicband type are typically activity monitors or sleep tracking devices like the Nike FuelBand or Up by Jawbone. Typical Smartband devices have many features, many of which you can access even on your smartphone. Basicband devices can transmit accumulated data to a smartphone, but have no feature to pass on notifications from your smartphone. By providing features only around notification, Lily aims to fit in a niche in where existing wrist-type wearable devices are not. Since the device is a prototype, the company has no immediate plan to sell it commercially. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that even non-hardware company like Recruit wants to get involved in recent the Internet-of-Things trend. From our make.thebridge.jp site (Japanese)
By linking with your smartphone, the device notifies you when you receive a call or chat message from someone, when a friend is near by, or when you’ve accidentally left your smartphone behind somewhere.
Wrist-type wearable devices can be generally categorized into two types. The Smartband type includes smart watches such as Pebble, Xperia Style, and Galaxy Gear. The Basicband type are typically activity monitors or sleep tracking devices like the Nike FuelBand or Up by Jawbone.
Typical Smartband devices have many features, many of which you can access even on your smartphone. Basicband devices can transmit accumulated data to a smartphone, but have no feature to pass on notifications from your smartphone.
By providing features only around notification, Lily aims to fit in a niche in where existing wrist-type wearable devices are not.
Since the device is a prototype, the company has no immediate plan to sell it commercially. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that even non-hardware company like Recruit wants to get involved in recent the Internet-of-Things trend.
Wearable Tech Japan 2014 was largely devoid of startups (with the exception of Moff) in the main exhibition area. But on the corporate side, there was one interesting project from Japan’s Brilliant Service Corporation that was getting some attention from visitors. The company’s Mirama product is – in its current form – a rather heavy head-mounted display that lets you make gestures in front of your face to control the see-through onscreen interface in front of your eyes. You can perform a number gestures, including thumbs up for ok, thumbs down for cancel, and even frame a picture with your fingers to snap off a picture. The interface also lets you push on screen buttons, do handwriting with your fingers (my handwriting was pretty awful), and even send and receive email using an onscreen menu. The prototype is available for sale from the company’s website, and there’s also a SDK provided for those who would like to hack it further. Prototype packages do not come cheap however, ranging in price from 3 million yen (almost $30,000) to 200,000 yen for a Mirama sensor kit. I had a chance to try out the Mirama glasses, and it was a really fun…
Wearable Tech Japan 2014 was largely devoid of startups (with the exception of Moff) in the main exhibition area. But on the corporate side, there was one interesting project from Japan’s Brilliant Service Corporation that was getting some attention from visitors.
The company’s Mirama product is – in its current form – a rather heavy head-mounted display that lets you make gestures in front of your face to control the see-through onscreen interface in front of your eyes. You can perform a number gestures, including thumbs up for ok, thumbs down for cancel, and even frame a picture with your fingers to snap off a picture.
The interface also lets you push on screen buttons, do handwriting with your fingers (my handwriting was pretty awful), and even send and receive email using an onscreen menu.
The prototype is available for sale from the company’s website, and there’s also a SDK provided for those who would like to hack it further. Prototype packages do not come cheap however, ranging in price from 3 million yen (almost $30,000) to 200,000 yen for a Mirama sensor kit.
I had a chance to try out the Mirama glasses, and it was a really fun experience. The weight of the device nearly broke my nose, but it was still pretty interesting. If you’d like to preview what happens on the Mirama screen, check out the demo video below.
Yesterday we mentioned Japan-based OpenPool, an interactive billiards kit that’s currently raising funds on Kickstarter, coinciding with their exhibition at SXSW. There are a number of Japanese companies pushing their wares at the Austin conference, and another one is smart-toy maker Moff, who we spoke with earlier in the month. Like OpenPool, Moff has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its wearable wristband toy at SXSW, and as I write this, they’re almost at their fundraising goal, with more than $15,000 of their $20,000 goal raised. As part of their Kickstarter materials, Moff has laid out a development roadmap (see below) detailing plans to mass produce and ship their wristband this summer. Kickstarter backers who pitch in financially can get Moff wristbands as rewards, which certainly makes it worthwhile to support the project. If you’d like a more detailed overview of how Moff works, you can check out the Kickstarter promo video above.
Yesterday we mentioned Japan-based OpenPool, an interactive billiards kit that’s currently raising funds on Kickstarter, coinciding with their exhibition at SXSW. There are a number of Japanese companies pushing their wares at the Austin conference, and another one is smart-toy maker Moff, who we spoke with earlier in the month.
Like OpenPool, Moff has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its wearable wristband toy at SXSW, and as I write this, they’re almost at their fundraising goal, with more than $15,000 of their $20,000 goal raised.
As part of their Kickstarter materials, Moff has laid out a development roadmap (see below) detailing plans to mass produce and ship their wristband this summer.
Kickstarter backers who pitch in financially can get Moff wristbands as rewards, which certainly makes it worthwhile to support the project.
If you’d like a more detailed overview of how Moff works, you can check out the Kickstarter promo video above.
Many of our readers may have read over on TechCrunch recently that ‘Ring,’ a hardware device that ostensibly gives you the ability to control devices when worn on your finger, has been funded via a Kickstarter project. The device previously took top honors at the 2013 TechCrunch Tokyo Startup Battle. But despite that achievement, I continue to encounter skeptics who think that Ring might be little more than vaporware at this stage – or at the very least, that it its makers have a big challenge ahead if they hope to bring it to market. Personally, I really hope that Ring is every bit as good as it looks. But I thought I’d ask the folks at LogBar, the startup behind the device if I could perhaps get a demo of Ring. A representative told me via email that they plan to attend the upcoming Wearable Tech Expo in Tokyo where they will speak on stage, but they’re undecided whether they will do a demo or not. I asked if they could explain more about how their battery works 1, but the company has yet to reply on this point. Our readers may recall that we have previously featured another…
Many of our readers may have read over on TechCrunch recently that ‘Ring,’ a hardware device that ostensibly gives you the ability to control devices when worn on your finger, has been funded via a Kickstarter project.
The device previously took top honors at the 2013 TechCrunch Tokyo Startup Battle. But despite that achievement, I continue to encounter skeptics who think that Ring might be little more than vaporware at this stage – or at the very least, that it its makers have a big challenge ahead if they hope to bring it to market.
Personally, I really hope that Ring is every bit as good as it looks. But I thought I’d ask the folks at LogBar, the startup behind the device if I could perhaps get a demo of Ring. A representative told me via email that they plan to attend the upcoming Wearable Tech Expo in Tokyo where they will speak on stage, but they’re undecided whether they will do a demo or not. I asked if they could explain more about how their battery works 1, but the company has yet to reply on this point.
Our readers may recall that we have previously featured another wearable ring device, Ringu, made by the folks at Keio University’s Mixed Reality Lab. I asked Dr. Adrian Cheok (of Keio University’s MRL and City University London) about the challenges they faced in finding a battery for their ring, and he explained:
From my experience it seems very very tough to fit everything in their ring size and also the battery. We searched almost every manufacturer and we found the minimum size of rechargeable battery was about 1.5 to 2cm for anything that can last for a few hours for our Bluetooth haptic ring.
It’s possible that the folks at LogBar could find some advanced technology that would do the trick, but he remains somewhat doubtful.
The Ring project is a very ambitious one, and I do hope the folks at LogBar can succeed. But ultimately I think that excitement over its potential should be held in check until we see a working demo at least. So far we’ve seen some impressive promotional material, a blurry video, and not too much else.
As for the other Ring project, Ringu, from Keio’s Mixed Reality Lab, they’re gearing up for their own launch event upcoming on April 9th at Sparklabs Global Demo Day, which will be held in Seoul.
I inquired with the company yesterday afternoon. ↩
At the first session of TechCrunch Tokyo, Telepathy’s CEO Takahito Iguchi took to the stage along with Kevin Landis, from chief investment manager from Firsthand Capital Management. Our readers will recall that FCM (NASDAQ:SVVC) invested $5 million in Telepathy back in August. Moderator Ken Nishimura got right to the point, asking about Google Glass, the product to which Telepathy’s glasses are often compared. Iguchi explained: Google Glass is not in the Japanese market yet, so it’s hard to compare. But our device is focused on communication. For humans, communication is a vast activity. And smartphones are a big part of that. […] Similar to Google glass, power consumption is key. In order to have full time communications up, that’s a big area of our development [1]. Iguchi disclaimed that his PR team has put some limitations on how much he can say about his product, but with regards to its user interface he says that he wants to minimize it as much as possible. “It’s a big paradigm shift that we have here,” he added. It should be forgotten and not so visible, he noted. Nishimura followed up by asking if this would involved the use of gestures, and Iguchi…
At the first session of TechCrunch Tokyo, Telepathy’s CEO Takahito Iguchi took to the stage along with Kevin Landis, from chief investment manager from Firsthand Capital Management. Our readers will recall that FCM (NASDAQ:SVVC) invested $5 million in Telepathy back in August.
Moderator Ken Nishimura got right to the point, asking about Google Glass, the product to which Telepathy’s glasses are often compared. Iguchi explained:
Google Glass is not in the Japanese market yet, so it’s hard to compare. But our device is focused on communication. For humans, communication is a vast activity. And smartphones are a big part of that. […] Similar to Google glass, power consumption is key. In order to have full time communications up, that’s a big area of our development [1].
Iguchi disclaimed that his PR team has put some limitations on how much he can say about his product, but with regards to its user interface he says that he wants to minimize it as much as possible. “It’s a big paradigm shift that we have here,” he added.
It should be forgotten and not so visible, he noted. Nishimura followed up by asking if this would involved the use of gestures, and Iguchi froze for a moment in what might be a telling ‘non-response’ response.
Kevin further emphasized this point be drawing a comparison to other wearable technologies already on the market:
We think Fitbit and Jawbone will do quite well, and will maybe will have successful IPOs. They have big markets they’re going after, but they have just one use case: people’s desire to monitor and improve their fitness. […] But that’s just one use case. With smartphones, the products sits between users when you talk to another person. But telepathy takes the product out from between people. If it is done just right, it will feel like the product disappears. and to me that’s true elegance.
Takehito Iguchi right, Kevin Landis left
One of the most interesting moments of the talk came when Iguchi was asked whether or not he could really bring this product to market, in a way that makes it cheaper than Google Glass. He couldn’t say anything about the price or exact release date, but he did speak a little bit to the challenge of creating such a device, as well as why they are taking on that challenge:
This is not easy, but we are doing it because it’s not easy. That may sound a little strange, but if it is something that anyone can do then it is not worthwhile or challenging – it’s not innovation. We are happy to try it.
Iguchi also talked a little bit about how his team is spread across both Silicon Valley and Tokyo. Members in Silicon Valley are strong in software, user interface and core application development. And his team in Tokyo is focused on the core hardware development.
He added that when his product does come to market, it will likely be in the US market to start with.
The team still obviously has a lot of work to, perhaps symbolically illustrated by the fact that he was wearing his glasses hung around his neck, rather than on his head.
Note that Iguchi’s quotes are taken from a live translation on-site. He spoke in Japanese for this talk. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. Telepathy is a Japanese startup focused on developing wearable technology. The company is led by serial entrepreneur Takahito Iguchi, the inventor of the pioneering augmented reality app Sekai Camera. Telepathy announced today it has raised $5 million from Silicon Valley-based VC Firsthand Technology Value Fund (NASDAQ:SVVC). The fund is known for having previously invested in prominent tech companies including Facebook and Twitter. The startup unveiled its first product, Telepathy One, last year at SXSW, positioned as a direct competitor to Google Glass. There will be an SDK for app developers this fall, and the company will begin marketing the device in 2014. With these new funds, the company will hire more engineers to work at its headquarters in Silicon Valley. Iguchi explained: Wearable technology will enable the next wave in social networking, […] and the initial response to our Telepathy One prototype has been astounding. The $5 million funding will enable us to enrich the user experience of Telepathy One, which we expect to bring to market in 2014. If you are a hardware or software engineer interested in working with the company, you can find more details here. The startup also announced today…
Telepathy is a Japanese startup focused on developing wearable technology. The company is led by serial entrepreneur Takahito Iguchi, the inventor of the pioneering augmented reality app Sekai Camera. Telepathy announced today it has raised $5 million from Silicon Valley-based VC Firsthand Technology Value Fund (NASDAQ:SVVC). The fund is known for having previously invested in prominent tech companies including Facebook and Twitter.
The startup unveiled its first product, Telepathy One, last year at SXSW, positioned as a direct competitor to Google Glass. There will be an SDK for app developers this fall, and the company will begin marketing the device in 2014. With these new funds, the company will hire more engineers to work at its headquarters in Silicon Valley.
Telepathy’s Takahito Iguchi, chief investment officer of Firsthand Kevin Landis
Iguchi explained:
Wearable technology will enable the next wave in social networking, […] and the initial response to our Telepathy One prototype has been astounding.
The $5 million funding will enable us to enrich the user experience of Telepathy One, which we expect to bring to market in 2014.
If you are a hardware or software engineer interested in working with the company, you can find more details here.
The startup also announced today that Peter Hoddie, the former QucikTime architect at Apple, has joined its advisory board. They plan to bring his experience in digital video technology to the development of their wearable device.
For more infomation on Telepathy One, check out the short news clip below.
wearables 
Junya Mori
Rick Martin
Masaru Ikeda
