Some say love is a universal language––and the rest are scientists who set out to develop more practical workarounds to communication barriers.
Some of the greatest ideas happen out of necessity, such as a man needing to talk to a woman.
Andrew Ochoa was on vacation and met a French girl who didn’t speak English. Using translator apps on their smartphones became more of an inhibitor than a help, so Ochoa set out to solve the problem, and, voila, the Pilot smart earpiece was born.
This wireless wearable, which sits in your ear, allows two people to speak different languages but still understand each other. When one person speaks, the other person hears it in their language.
This automated translation app was created by Ochoa, the CEO and director of product development at Waverly Labs, and a team of electrical, mechanical and software engineers, machine translation specialists and industrial designers. The Pilot Translation Kit includes two earbuds and a mobile app to toggle between languages. Waverly Lab’s translation engine relies on statistical-based speech translation technologies from multiple sources, including speech recognition, machine translation, machine learning and speech synthesis. The process occurs simultaneously so as one person speaks the other person is hearing the translation in near real-time.
Currently available in five languages (English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish), the Pilot will be generally available in the summer of 2017 and priced at $249.
The Pilot is an unobtrusive advanced communication wearable that will be perfect for the international traveler. Or, for the guy who wants to meet the foreign girl.
