HiWave, a UK based electronics innovation company recently revealed a new technology that may turn your average pair of sports sunglasses into something else entirely.
Farina is the name of this new technology, which is essentially a small transducer that fits to the arm of the sunglasses. This transducer stimulates the bones surrounding the outer ear allowing the user to pick up sound without obstruction of the ear canal.
Bone conduction technology is not a new concept, something our audiologist often reminds us of. However, it’s combination with sports equipment such as headphones or sunglasses is something that is still relatively new. Aftershokz and Audio Bone have both successfully created headphones that use this technology, but other than that we haven’t seen much.
According to HiWave CEO James Lewis,”With Farina audio, the mini-transducers will be embedded into the arms of the glasses where they touch the ears, and the amplifier circuitry will be a single chip that, together with the Bluetooth or other wireless chip will disappear into the frame.”
HiWave believes this is the technology of the future which, like Google’s Project Glass, will allow users to combine video and audio straight into their glasses.
This technology is still in the concept stage, but HiWave is hoping to get this technology completed by the end of 2012.