Chinese-Made Google Glass by Baidu in the Works
Still yet to be released to the global public, but Google's Project Glass is already being cloned by Baidu Inc, China's largest search engine.
On Wednesday, Baidu announced it is currently working on "Baidu Eye," its response to the $1,500 worth Google Glass. It is not sure however if the Chinese-styled and -made glasses will be made available to the public.
"We haven't decided whether it is going to be released in any commercial form right now, but we experiment with every kind of technology that is related to search," Kaiser Kuo, Baidu's spokesman, said.
"We're doing some internal testing on it now on a small scale, and evaluating where this goes from here. That's why we didn't make any public official announcement on this," Mr Kuo told Mashable.
The device will enable users to conduct hands-free Internet searches via voice commands. It comes with a head-worn LCD screen.
Very much like Google Glass, Baidu Eye is an "ocular wearable interface" that uses sound and visual inputs, enabling the wearer to snap photos of items of just about anything that interests them in order to learn more about them.
"What you are doing with your camera, for example, taking a picture of a celebrity and then checking on our database to see if we have a facial image match, you could do the same thing with a wearable visual device," Mr Kuo said.
"We don't believe search should be limited to text. You should be able to search with multiple inputs," he added. "You can snap a picture of a building you're looking at and bring up its data."
According to Gizmodo, the Baidu Eye will be an open platform for developers to make apps on. It is expected to be built by Foxconn, with a battery life of 12 hours aided by Qualcomm.
Baidu is China's most popular online search engine.