The wild and wacky world of air travel seems like a great candidate for wearable technology. After all, when you are cruising thousands upon thousands of feet in the air at high velocities, you are gonna need all of the help you can get to make sure you don’t end up as an oddly colored splat in some remote jungle somewhere. There have been some rumblings recently as to whether or pilot pilots would adopt technologies such as Google Glass to help them stay in better contact with air traffic control, among other things. That may still come to pass, but for now we have the world’s first dedicated eyewear device specially designed for pilots.
It is appropriately called the Skylens and it works to bring the tech-heavy world of augmented reality to those that regularly join the mile high club(the flying part, not the sex part.) At its root, these glasses overlay pertinent information on to the world, thus giving the pilot important info if conditions make it so he or she cannot trust their actual eyes. If you immediately thought of darkness or storms, you’d be right. Additionally, it is designed to work all on its own, with no need for extra hardware on the airplane or helicopter end. This could save a lot of lives.
The Skylens system is currently being reviewed by the commercial airline industry and if things go well, these visors are expected to start showing up in flights in 2016. We’ll let you know more information as it becomes available.
