It's not Tony Stark's Jarvis assistant, but it's Jarv … ish? The Jarvish X-AR is another smart heads-up motorcycle helmet with all the trimmings, from a basic HUD to 360-degree cameras and voice-controlled commands. And now it's being upgraded to feature augmented reality and Alexa voice assistant integration.
It's unclear exactly what "advanced augmented reality" means to the Jarvish team from Taiwan, but like all the heads-up helmet companies it's got a mockup image that may be instructive. From what we can tell, the heads-up display (which extends and retracts in response to voice commands) will show things like time, weather, chance of precipitation, media and phone call metadata, a live compass, navigation cues, current speed, and the local speed limit – although if that's generated based on map data it won't include roadworks speed limits or ones that have been recently changed.
The helmet will have a full carbon shell, as well as ultra-wide-angle front and rear cameras capable of recording more or less a 360-degree panorama of what's happening as you ride. Until we see evidence to the contrary, we'll assume these will be more dashcam than action cam quality, but that's fine.
Audio-wise, the Jarvish has a built-in Bluetooth system that connects to your smartphone to enable phone calls and podcast and music listening. Like most intercoms, there will be a smart assistant button that lets you access Siri or Google Assistant for voice queries and commands. But this might be the first one we've seen that incorporates Amazon's Alexa as well, so you can order yourself some toilet rolls if the mood strikes you during a ride.
According to Wareable, the helmet is already fully certified to meet DOT, ECE and a number of Asian standards, it'll have 16 GB worth of internal storage for video, a card slot for up to 256 GB more storage, and the capability to use the rear camera as a rear view mirror.
That's all nice, but Wareable also has intel suggesting the cost will be up over US$1,000, and the battery will only last four hours. That might be four hours worth of running flat out, with both cameras recording, the HUD and media audio playing, but four hours isn't a whole lot. I guess you can always carry a powerbank in your pocket and plug it in.
As for release? Potentially somewhere in early 2019. But the smart helmet category is not exactly known for delivering on its big promises at this stage, so we'll wait and see.
Source: Jarvish
