Sign in to view
member only content

Police in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of Henan Province in East-Central China are using state-of-the-art smart glasses. The smart glasses, called GLXSS, use facial recognition technology to assist police work. The creator of  GLXSS, is LLVision, a company formed by teams from Google, Lenovo, Microsoft and China Aeronautics Consortium.

GLXSS is currently being used by four police officers in the province’s railway station. The glasses are designed to scan the crowds in the very busy station. The glasses have proven to be a big success, as police at the station have already detained 33 suspects. The majority accusations were use of fake IDs. However, seven arrests were for human trafficking and also hit and runs.

Between February 1 and March 12, it is estimated that 389 million trips will be made during the peak holiday period of the Chinese New Year. The police see this as an ideal opportunity to scan the crowds for criminals. The headset, which is based on Google Glass technology, allows the officers to take photos of any suspicious-looking people. The photos are then run through the police database. Information, including the individual’s name, address, criminal record and even their internet history, is beamed back to the glasses to be viewed on its 0.25-inch screen.

LLVision claim that police work is just one of the many applications for the smart glasses. Other industries that the company plans for these smart glasses to be used in include medical, education, energy, traffic and manufacturing.

Smart glasses have already found a number of uses to help people. These glasses, for example, help the partially sighted to see, while this spectacle attachment lights up to alert deaf and hearing-impaired people to noises outside their immediate field of vision.