Sony will equip Virgin Atlantic engineers with its wearables
Who'd ever be dorky enough to wear a smartglass and a smartwatch at the same time? Virgin Atlantic employees, apparently. The company has partnered with Sony to equip its plane engineers at Heathrow Airport with the Sony SmartWatch 3 and the SmartEyeglass Developer Edition SED-E1 for the next few months, starting next week. This, by the way, comes a year after Virgin had its ground crew from the same airport wear both a Sony Smartwatch 2 and a Google Glass to greet Upper Class passengers by name. According to Sony, the engineers will use the smartglass to stream real-time videos to technicians to speed up technical assistance. The smartwatch, on the other hand, will notify them of job allocations and any changes they should know of.
The electronics maker says this trial run will help it assess how wearables can help businesses in the long run. Director of Operations at Virgin Atlantic, Phil Maher, said:
We are proud of our recent innovation work to provide the best possible experience for our customer facing roles and we're pleased to now be exploring how new technology can contribute towards our essential operations procedures. It's a great way to empower our people by providing instant access to the information they need to be more effective in their roles.
We, however, just hope this will make Sony reconsider how those glasses look.
