Published on the 03/06/2015 | Written by Donovan Jackson

Epson is going where Google has gone before. At an Auckland event to launch a new range of consumer printers, the company best known for its consumer printers demonstrated a pair of Google Glass-like spectacles. The perhaps most significant difference has less to do with what they look like than it does with what they are intended for: Epson’s Moverio BT200 is aimed squarely at commercial users, rather than consumers.

Demonstrating the glasses, the GM responsible for sales & marketing in Epson ANZ’s consumer division Bruce Bealby said they were ideal for use in environments including manufacturing, construction, engineering and other industries where work involves looking at blueprints or other sources of information, while working on an engine or (in the medical industry) perhaps operating. “The product is pretty new to market, but it is already being used in production in Asian countries and by some customers in America,” he said.

“While for Google, Glass was maybe more of a marketing exercise, and a very successful one at that, Moverio is intended for the workplace, where fashion is far less of a consideration than practicality,” he added.

A hands-on, or, rather, face-on experience of the Moverio immediately demonstrated its potential; it has a separate touchpad/battery pack which provides the ability to navigate, while looking through the bifocal-styled glasses at a schematic produced a pop-up of a building which could be viewed in 3-D from various angles.

There’s no reason to wonder too hard why a ‘consumer printing company’ has a visual solution like this: Epson is one of the world’s top makers of projectors and it produces embedded components for a wide variety of applications, including GPS sportstrackers. It even provides telemetry solutions for the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 team.

Moverio is available directly from Epson.co.nz; the price: $999.99. Bealby said, however, that the product is as yet still relatively immature, serving as a platform upon which developers can innovate to create suitable applications.

Epson has shop floor experience, too, producing a range of robotics solutions for manufacturing; Bruno Turcato, MD for Australia and New Zealand, said the company’s SCARA range of over 300 machines includes an autonomous dual arm robot which “Can see, sense and think. It interacts with the work that it does and is the future of robotics in this area.”

Perhaps the robot is capable of operating the new consumer printers announced by the company, which include as a major innovation the ability for the user to refill the cartridges with ink supplied along with the machine. These devices, under the EcoTank brand, are however, quite dear, starting at around $400, but including ‘two year’s worth’ of ink in separate bottles. Expect smudgy fingers.