Four gadgets enhancing our senses – from the Pilot translating earpiece to Microsoft’s HoloLens

The latest technology is improving our abilities to make us super-human
New worlds: Microsoft Hololens will bring users into virtual 'mixed reality' worlds
Microsoft

Technology is a masterful enabler. Where human flesh fails, it can pick up the slack and give you the superpowers that sci-fi is made of.

Moreover, as advances continue apace, the superpowers get ever more powerful.

Once upon a time your smartphone seemed almost magical, now it is as normal as a kettle — which, incidentally, are far smarter these days too.

Innovation is ambitious: these are some of latest superpowerful gadgets that are transforming our world.

Power of Babel

Pilot

Mastering a language requires years of discipline and fluency in several is extraordinary. Maybe you’ll do that class in business French you’re always talking about but most likely you won’t.

Pilot is the international fixer you need. The “world’s first translating earpiece” was presented at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month, and promises to work across five languages — English, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.

The process involves two earpieces — one for each person — and an app which uses speech-recognition and speech-synthesis technology to translate what one person is saying while simultaneously reporting it to the other through the second earpiece.

Currently it’s best used in professional contexts — as it will only work in a conversation between two people who are both wearing earpieces, though the app can also be put on speakerphone for use in conferences. The aim is for future iterations of the earpiece to be able to translate in real time.

In other words, one day in the not too distant future you might not spend all your foreign holiday lost in translation, smiling placidly at the waiter while fretting that you’ve just ordered a raw steak.

Early backers of the project on crowdfunding site IndieGoGo will receive the kit in May, while earpieces pre-ordered through its will arrive this summer.

USP: making you smarter without requiring any effort from you.

waverleylabs.com

Ring the changes

Kerv

Modern life happens at pace but there’s always room to shave off seconds. Indeed, many interactions feel archaic in their slowness — for example, the rigmarole of removing your contactless card from your wallet and touching it against the reader, or carrying a wallet at all.

Don’t waste any more time: you need a Kerv. It’s a contactless payment ring that can be used on any contactless reader, including those for Oyster cards. It is scratchproof and waterproof and you can pick from 14 different colour combinations. Better still, it doesn’t require charging, so you will always be able to pay (as long as you have the funds). And if you’re cautious about security, you can switch it off when you’re not using it.

You don’t need an app: instead, you set up a Kerv prepaid Mastercard to which you then register your ring.

USP: cutting down faff at the check-out.

kerv.com

Souped-up sight

Microsoft HoloLens

Thus far, smartglasses have promised a high octane, science-fictional world.

Microsoft’s HoloLens joins Google Glass and Snap’s Spectacles. However, Microsoft insists HoloLens is different, and early noises from commentators are encouraging.

The HoloLens works in what Microsoft calls “mixed reality” — which means “blending the physical and virtual worlds”. The headset containers sensors, amped-up optics and a hologram processing unit. It can do things such as suspend the interfaces of desktop apps in front of you so they appear as holograms — so you could hold a Skype call staring into space instead of into a screen — and pull up files for 3D working (especially useful in professions such as architecture). You swipe at the air to move things, which probably feels hilarious the first few times but will swiftly start to feel totally normal.

USP: feeling like you’re in a film.

microsoft.com

Never miss a heartbeat

FitBit Alta HR

Fitness trackers are often clumsier than billed. You usually have to fiddle around a bit — sometimes yours insists that you were stationary when you know you were cycling full pelt, or forgets to track a whole night’s sleep, throwing off the continuity of your metrics altogether.

Fitbit’s Alta HR insists that it can do better. Launched this week, it tracks your heart-rate continuously from a (very) slim band around your wrist, without a supplementary chest strap. Measuring heart rate all day delivers a better sense of your calorie burn (thereby permitting you to be a better human).

It also has auto-exercise recognition so it can sense what you’re doing and you don’t have to plug it in every time you get on a bike — which you invariably forget to do. This gives a much more accurate picture of your physical output. It tracks your sleep too, including the stages and cycles, so you can work out what might be stopping you from sleeping well.

USP: making you a superhuman.

fitbit.com/alta

Follow Phoebe Luckhurst on Twitter: @phoebeluckhurst

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