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Dubai police trialling Google Glass: Apps photograph traffic offenders, cross-reference number plates

The Smart Services Department of the Dubai Police is currently trialling and developing apps for Google Glass for the emirate's traffic cops.


Colonel Khalid Nasser Al Razooqi, Dubai Police's General Director of Smart Services, spoke to Gulf News about the two apps his team have developed so far for Google Glass. He said, "One will allow them to take photos of traffic violations from the Glass, which will go instantly into our system, and the other application helps identify wanted cars".

To take a photo an officer taps side the side of the device, and the photo is uploaded to the police department's servers along with a timestamp and location. In order to figure out if a car is on the emirate's wanted register, an officer just needs to look at the suspect's number plate and the app will search the department's database of wanted vehicles.

It's unclear at this stage when or if the Dubai Police plan on rolling out Google Glass to its traffic cops.

In the middle of May Google began selling the Glass Explorer Edition to the general public for US$1500 ($1625) excluding sales tax, although it's only available for purchase within the US.

Currently Google Glass consists of a frame, a small prism projector and screen, a touch sensor and a bone conducting transducer, which acts as the device's speaker. Controlling Glass can be done either by tapping or swiping the touch sensor, tilting or flicking one's head, or via voice commands.

At present only a limited number of apps are available on Glass, primarily in-house Google products, like Maps, Now, Google+ and Gmail. Additionally it can take photos, record short videos and display notifications from your calendar or social media feed. In its current state it doesn't fulfil the sci-fi promise of scanning the environment and popping up info boxes.

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