Category: Gadgets

A new strategy could have law enforcement personnel in the Netherlands wearing high tech devices.

Law enforcement in the Netherlands are looking to a new high tech police augmented reality system to help them to fight crime. The Dutch national police has been collaborating with several other organizations in this effort. It may mean that they one day use the Microsoft Hololens during a regular day.

The Dutch police have identified a string of different ways in which augmented reality could help them.

The police augmented reality project is the result of a collaboration among the national police force, the national fire brigade, the Dutch Forensic Institute, Delft University of Technology, and Twnkls, an AR development firm.

Chief Inspector Rob Kouwenhoven spoke in an interview with a Dutch newspaper explaining that there are many scenarios in which augmented reality technology could be very helpful.

The police augmented reality technology is still in somewhat of a prototype phase as it is tested.

At the moment, the AR tech being tested out involves the use of a smartphone camera attached to the shoulder of the user. It also requires another device to be strapped to the wrist. That gadget can be used for taking notes about a crime scene or for marking evidence.

The national police force is currently looking into whether or not it will be possible to test the Hololens augmented reality device. That Microsoft gadget may be able to provide an overlay of relevant information to wearers conducting a forensic investigation. This has the potential to simplify the investigation process and bring a crime’s various puzzle pieces together.

Kouwenhover pointed out that this AR tech could also be helpful within the courtroom. It could be used to reconstruct the scene of a crime in a much clearer and more visual way. At the moment, this effort requires a physical reenactment of the event in combination with a great deal of paperwork.

By using police augmented reality, a judge would be able to more clearly and realistically see what happened during the event. It could include the display of pieces of evidence and illustrated with digital animations and annotations overlaid on top of the crime scene imagery. Should things go as planned, the tech could be launched for police use in 5 years.

There are now tons of options on the market and despite tech company hopes, they’re not taking off.

As the holiday shopping season truly got underway last year, many companies predicted the launch of powerful wearable technology trends. Firms were unveiling devices left, right and center to ensure they had the chance to become the next big thing.

That time brought the entrance of the Apple Watch and Samsung Gear S2, major wearable tech players.

Lenovo, LG and Huawei all stepped in with Google to use Android Wear on their offerings. Each company wanted to add their own device to the wearable technology trends. However, a year later and well into the next holiday shopping season, it’s clear that consumers aren’t impressed. At least, they’re not as impressed as tech firms thought they would be. They’re certainly not ready to pay the hefty price tags for the devices.

Many in the industry feel that wearable technology trends won’t pick up until smartwatches become more convincing.

According to IDC senior research analyst Jitesh Ubrani, wearable technology companies have yet to give consumers a reason to want to buy. “A lot of what these devices can do, they’re essentially just mimicking the phone.”

As most people already have other mobile devices and certainly have a smartphone, there is little motivation to buy a smartwatch. Currently, people bring their smartphones everywhere they go. As the mobile devices are nearly always in a hand or a pocket, they are not considered inconvenient to use. Therefore, asking people to drop another few hundred dollars after already having spent several hundred on the phone seems too much for many consumers.

These unfortunate wearable technology trends have not been without their casualties. Pebble, for example, announced last week that they were shutting down. That company had been among the first smartwatch companies. It had a loyal following and was able to hold its own against the competition for quite some time. Now, faced with the Apple Watch and offerings from many other giants, even Pebble will be dissolving and selling its software to Fitbit; the leader of the fitness tracker scene.