Smart glasses with designer looks

Vue smart glasses offer a designer look plus connectivity, using taps to control smart phones and featuring bone conducting audio for safe listening during music playback and phone calls.

The uptake of smart glasses may have been limited by imposing styles and their obvious presence, making others uncomfortable. Following other trends we’ve seen that involve making technology fit seamlessly into a user’s style, such as smart fabrics that could be woven into clothes to turn garments into electricity generators, users can now reap the benefits of smart glasses without incurring any negative fashion points.

Vue’s smart glasses come in two styles (classic or trendy) plus sunglasses, and can fit prescription lenses. The bluetooth-enabled frames sync up to smartphones via an app so that users can take calls, listen to music and set reminders. Audio is produced via bone conduction, through a ridge that sits against the user’s ear. This allows user’s to listen to music while, for example, cycling safely, and prevents others from overhearing. The side of the frames provide a tactile control surface, for taking/receiving calls and skipping tracks with a tap, and a subtle LED flashes when notifications are received. The Vue glasses, which are charged wirelessly in a case that provides a week of battery life, are currently undergoing a crowdfunding campaign on kickstarter, and will be available in summer 2017.

An open API will enable third party developers to add features onto the Vue glasses — what else could smart glasses offer?