Xloong AR glasses enable Chinese police using to cross-reference faces against the national database

Chinese startup Xloong is providing AR glasses to six local public security bureaus in the country to enable police to cross-reference faces against a national database, Nikkei Asia Review reports.

The glasses are equipped with cameras and embedded computer chips, allowing images to be superimposed on the visual field, and alerts to be received by the wearer.

Police in Beijing, Tianjin, and Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region are among those using Xloong glasses, and the company’s Founder and CEO Shi Xiaogang told the Review at the Forbes Under 30 Summit Asia in Hong Kong that the company will focus 80 percent of its efforts on security applications for the time being.

It also makes goggles for sports and glasses for industrial applications, but most of its revenue comes from law enforcement. Xloong recorded 30 million yuan (US$4.35 million) in revenue in the last fiscal year, with a net loss due to research and development investment.

“The market and the technology are not mature enough for mass-scale adoption yet, at least five more years is needed for augmented-reality glasses to be widely used among ordinary consumers,” Shi says.

The sports goggles retail for 2,999 yuan ($440), which Shi said yields very slim profit, so the domestic security market, which spent 1.24 trillion yuan ($181.8 billion) last year according to China’s Ministry of Finance, is the company’s main target.

Earlier this year it was reported that police in China’s Henan province are using glasses from LLVision equipped with facial recognition technology.

Article Topics

augmented reality  |  biometrics  |  criminal ID  |  facial recognition  |  police