ReadingMate, the LED Glasses That Let You Read and Run at the Same Time

Running, so they say, is good for you. This arduous task can be annoying at best and downright horrifying at worst. So what do we do to combat the misery of running? We do other stuff at the same time. We listen to music. We count the houses we pass by. We gulp down bottles of water and energy drinks. You know what we don’t do? We don’t read. Reading a book while running sounds like an exercise for the most vomitous vomit in the history of vomit-dom. Hold on to your ten gallon hats, however, one company has developed a snazzy piece of wearable tech that lets us do just that(without the vomit.)

A group of researchers at Purdue University have developed something they call the ReadingMate. It’s purpose? To allow you to run and read at the same exact time. It works by running text along a screen that rests on top of a treadmill. The text is sycned up with the readers’s gait and moves accordingly, making sure to align itself to the runner’s eyeballs at all times. The whole thing is further steadied by a pair of LED glasses the reader/runner wears. Now you can read The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner as you run long distances lonelily. It’s a wearable technology miracle!

This technology has performed extremely well in testing and, as such, could have applications beyond the world of reading while running. The designers envision being of use to people operating heavy machinery and aircraft, where any vibration can hamper an already difficult situation. In the meantime, maybe these little bad boys will begin showing up at your local gym. Bring your favorite summer reading, or just cache this entire website. Your call.