INNOVATION September-October 2015

f ea t u r e s

In 2010, three years before Google came out with its infamous and now-suspended (at least for general use) Google Glass product, Recon launched its first smart ski goggles. It sold 10,000 units in eight weeks. “Our original idea,” back when the founders of the company were graduate students at UBC in 2006 says Abdollahi, “was to create swim goggles that would give swimmers a heads-up display with their real-time performance data: lap time, heart rate, etc. That didn’t work well because of the size of the goggles, so we pivoted to ski goggles with their greater real estate to pack electronics in.” The resulting product—with only sensors and without connection to a smartphone—allows skiers and snowboarders to safely glance slightly down and to the right to read critical metrics about their bodies, pace, and speed. With a smart-phone connection, goggle wearers can post live video to Facebook, see maps of the trails, read text messages as they arrive, control their music, and track their buddies on the hill. The goggle technology can also be easily tweaked for use as smart glasses by both professional and amateur athletes in a range of sports, including running, cycling, sailing, and golfing. But perhaps the biggest selling point for serious competitors and weekend warriors alike is Recon’s attention to design. The company’s heads-up displays, especially its Recon Jet sunglasses, look sleek, futuristic, and very, very cool. So cool, and so promising, that Intel Corp. bought the Canadian company in June 2015 for something in the range of $175 million. “Everyone, about 70 full-time employees right now, is staying on here in Vancouver,” says Abdollahi, “and we’re looking to hire new people. We want to continue making our smart glasses and goggles smaller, lighter, more usable, and contextual. For example, we’d like to see them go into hybrid mode and save battery when someone goes from skiing into a restaurant.” But these, he admits, are “evolutionary improvements,” necessary for smart devices like Recon’s to improve. The truly “revolutionary products over the next few years will be the textiles and even plantable devices under the skin.” Abdollahi also believes Vancouver will be at the epicentre of the next wave in truly smart, wearable and useful technology. “There is so much exciting activity up here in both hardware technologies and software development,” he says. “It’s an incredibly vibrant ecosystem for wearable-technology companies, where we can feed off and build on each other’s work, with easy access to great universities and good labs.” v

GAME-CHANGING WEARABLES FROM ELSEWHERE IN CANADA Toronto is also an

In Addition • Kitchener’s Thalmic Labs is working on an armband that can be used to control

internationally recognized hot spot for wearable technology development. Projects underway there include: • Electronic glasses that enable the legally blind to see, from eSight Digital Eyewear. • A wristband that uses your heartbeat to authenticate your identity (no more passwords!), by Nymi. • A brainwave-reading headband that helps train your brain to relax and meditate, from InteraXon.

computers and mobile devices with a wave.

• Montreal’s OMSignal has developed exercise wear that can not only track your heart rhythm, heart rate, oxygen levels and steps taken, but also match that information with external data sets, such as weather, to guide and improve your workout.

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