Well, the good folks at Vuzix and Nuance (News - Alert) have joined up to deliver voice recognition capability to the very cool Vuzix M100 smart glasses. This is an excellent move and one that was, in fact, needed in our opinion. And for doing so there is hardly a better partner to provide voice recognition than Nuance Communications (News - Alert).  The M100 smart glasses are Vuzix's Android (News - Alert)-based wearable display platform that began shipping in December 2013 that Vuzix is directly targeting (at least initially) for enterprise use.

The M100s are already able to run a growing number of industry targeted software applications, such as being delivered by the likes of SAP (News - Alert).  To date the glasses have been entirely focused on the visual end of things, but Nuance’s voice technology now adds a much needed - and intuitive - way to engage the M100 smart glasses. Voice recognition significantly helps to increase safety and task efficiencies in the workplace - a major requirement for enterprise use.

As we would expect, Nuance’s embedded voice technology runs directly on the M100 smart glasses. This means of course that there is absolutely no data connection required.  Vuzix has also made sure to provide the M100 smart glasses with noise-cancelling technology that allows users to speak simple commands to control and navigate the M100 menu system.  Again, this sort of capability is a requirement for enterprise workplaces, warehouses and numerous other environments where workers are likely to deploy the M100s.

The Nuance voice technology, which will available in the Vuzix M100 2.0 OS release, will allow users to simply issue voice commands. Users will now be able to, for example, say such things as:

• Scroll left and select application;
• List next pick item;
• Navigate to location.

Paul Travers, Vuzix's CEO says, “Vuzix is focused on delivering powerful wearable technologies to the industrial, medical and prosumer markets. By integrating Nuance’s voice technology into the M100 platform, we’ve given our customers even greater flexibility in the way they can use our smart glasses to solve issues that challenge their businesses.  Because a user can now speak naturally, integrating smart glass technology into our customers’ business processes becomes much more intuitive and simply faster, saving both time and money.”

We confess we are big fans of the M100s. We believe they are the right technology to deploy within the enterprise workplace - which requires a robust design that can both "take a beating" yet offer a sophisticated level of software application development. The M100, which comes with a comprehensive SDK meets this enterprise need exactly. With the addition of the Nuance technology the M100s are now a truly complete enterprise package.