Smart Earpiece Can Instantly Translate Any Language

5/17/2016
Updated:
5/18/2016

One company believes its product can create “a world without language barriers.”

After two years of research and development, Waverly Labs has created the Pilot—the world’s first smart earpiece language translator.

The Pilot looks just like a small earbud, sans wires, yet it is a device “at the convergence of wearable technology and machine translation.” 

By employing the latest speech recognition and machine translation technology, Pilot is capable of translating between users speaking different languages.

Founder and CEO Andrew Ochoa first envisioned "a life untethered, free of language barriers" when he met a French girl. (Waverly Labs)
Founder and CEO Andrew Ochoa first envisioned "a life untethered, free of language barriers" when he met a French girl. (Waverly Labs)

The device seems straight out a science fiction tale.

Designed to work offline, the Pilot, which comes with a second earpiece, is intended for “the Traveller, International Professional, and Digital Nomad.”

The Pilot also functions as a pair of traditional headphones, allowing users to stream music from their mobile devices.  

The Pilot will be available in three colors. (Waverly Labs)
The Pilot will be available in three colors. (Waverly Labs)

The pre-order package includes the Pilot and secondary earpiece (two earpieces total), one portable charger, and the accompanying mobile app.

The mobile app, where the languages are downloaded for the earpiece, allows users to toggle between languages.

Initially, Romance and Germanic languages, including English, Spanish, French, and Italian will be available.

Soon after, Waverly Labs hopes to release “Slavic, Semitic, Hindi, and East Asian” languages. 

Waverly Labs notes that the mobile app, available in summer 2016, can be used as a stand-alone “basic phrasebook for translation.”

(Waverly Labs)
(Waverly Labs)

During the Pilot’s launch campaign—May 24 and 25 2016—interested individuals can pre-order their Pilot via Indiegogo. All those who do will never have to pay a fee for new language packs, as retail purchasers will. 

Available for purchase by Spring 2017, the Pilot retail price is not expected to exceed $299.