Trouble Staying Focused? These Smart Glasses Monitor What You Look at to Keep You on Task
Auctify Specs, which launched today on Indiegogo, feature a built-in camera that keeps track of what you’re looking at and sends that data to an app, where you can analyze your daily habits.
By Sherin Shibu
We all get distracted at one time or another, but if procrastination or the siren call of social media is affecting your concentration, a pair of smart glasses that monitor your daily activity might help you stay focused.
Auctify Specs, which launched today on Indiegogo, feature a built-in camera that keeps track of what you’re looking at and sends that data to an app. In theory, you could then see that you’re spending a little too much time on Twitter in the afternoons or getting distracted by the constant barrage of Slack alerts, for example. (That is, if the Specs app is not itself a distraction.)
If you want Specs to keep you on task, set up an LED and audible cue when you’re doing something that’s keeping you from the task at hand.
“Specs extract live information using our built-in image sensor, accelerometer, and pulse oximeter. This data is then sent to your phone over Bluetooth, where it is processed by our machine learning models,” Auctify says. “The raw data is then immediately discarded afterwards to protect your privacy. Our ML models classify the data into one of 50 types of common activities (ie. watching TV, eating, reading, etc). As we further develop our models, we’ll be able to add more activities to this list.”
Specs can also act as a headset, according to Auctify, and lets you take calls and listen to music. Active users can even track their heart rate and steps taken throughout the day. Specs come in prescription and non-prescription versions and can be customized with blue light blocking or a tint.
As of this writing, Specs has topped its initial $10,000 goal and has banked about $17,000. You can pre-order them now for $239 with an estimated ship date of December 2020. But be aware that the world of crowdsourcing has mixed results, particularly when it comes to hardware.
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.
