Baidu Eye is the Chinese company’s answer to Google Glass

Earlier this year Baidu revealed that they were working on a wearable headset of their own which was meant to rival the likes of Google Glass. Dubbed the “Eye”, it seems that the device is still in its somewhat early stages of development although the company did reveal additional information about it at Baidu World. Baidu’s Director of International Communications, Kaiser Kuo, mentioned that the Eye was still in its prototype stages, but there are plans to make it available to consumers eventually, although they did point out that the Eye was more of an experiment if anything.

Baidu, China’s largest search engine, on Wednesday showed off a working prototype of a head-mounted device aimed at consumers called Baidu Eye. Baidu’s new wearable tethers to a smartphone, recognizes voice and gesture commands, and includes an earpiece and camera. Unlike Google Glass, Baidu Eye lacks a screen. To enable hands-free search, the camera on the right side of Baidu Eye can take photos and recognize objects in them, a feature that can facilitate online shopping. Such a scanner harks back to the Firefly feature on Amazon’s new Fire phone that can pull up information and shopping pages for objects and barcodes it recognizes. In lieu of a screen, Baidu Eye relays information back to a connected smartphone, an intentional design choice to extend the battery life of the device to about two hours. One of the major complaints about Google Glass is its shoddy battery life–it can run about 45 minutes with continuous recording.