Cyber Goggles May Find Your Keys

Tired of losing your car keys? Annoyed that you can’t remember where you put your sunglasses? Then Cyber Goggles might be for you. If you don’t know what Cyber Goggles are, don’t feel too bad. They’re a relatively new device, a high-tech memory aid designed to make misplacing your car keys an extremely rare occurrence.

Pink Tentacle and Popular Science report that University of Tokyo researchers created the Cyber Goggles. The goggles function as a type of video system, worn like normal goggles, that records everything their wearer sees. Not only that, but the Cyber Goggles recognize and assign names to objects in the digital display, thus creating a database that can searched from the footage. Owners can then view this footage to find whatever item it is that they’ve misplaced. Cyber Goggles come with a compact camera that sends video to a computer on the user’s back. The computer uses super fast image recognition software to recognize and then sort out the objects that appear in the video. Users can later type in a keyword to search for a missing item. The video will play on a small LCD screen attached to the right Cyber Goggles’ lens. This will help the user remember where the missing item had been placed. During a demonstration last year at the University of Tokyo, researchers programmed 60 common items, everything from a hammer to a cell phone, into the memory of a pair of Cyber Goggles. A researcher demonstrating the goggles walked the room to view and record these items. As he did so, the names of the items appeared on the goggles’ screen. The researcher was then able to search for the items and bring up the correct video.

The creators of the Cyber Goggles say that the device’s main use is to serve as a memory aid for elderly people. However, the Cyber Goggles may have several other uses. For one thing, researchers say, they might help in developing robots with human-like abilities. Also, the image recognition processing technology of the Cyber Goggles might be useful for sifting through large amounts of video for specific images.

Whatever uses the Cyber Goggles may have, it’s unclear when they’ll be available for the mass market. For now, the Cyber Goggles are still under development. And there’s no timetable for when they’ll be available on a wide scale.  They may seem like something out of a science fiction movie, but Cyber Goggles may prove instrumental in helping people live with memory loss.  There’s only one question: What if you can’t remember where you put the Cyber Goggles in the house?

Of course it isn't all science, or even safety goggles, apparently cyber goggles can also be very fashionable. There's a cosplay movement called steampunk, and old style eyewear creates a cool look you can find on young people from coast to coast.

Steampunk takes the fashion and technology from the Victorian era, mixes it with our own and comes up with many wonderful and fanciful creations. Check out the video!