Most of the newer hearable devices use in-the-ear or in the ear-canal designs. Waverly Labs‘ new Ambassador is an over-the-ear translation device that blocks excessive ambient sound without touching the inside of the wearer’s ear, for a more hygienic design. The Ambassador translates 20 languages and 42 dialects. When you control the Ambassador with an associated iOS or Android app, up to four people wearing Ambassadors can share the smartphone or tablet connection.
The Ambassador can run up to four hours per battery charge, according to Waverly. The company also states that new Ambassador features improve voice capture accuracy and signal transmission strength. The Ambassador has three operational modes: listen, lecture, and converse, with different algorithms that optimize each listening situation. The Ambassador now has cross-talk filtering to ignore other voices when appropriate. Feedback loop filtering, another new feature, means that the wearable won’t continue in the translation mode during playback. You can also save custom terms with the interpreter’s app.
In addition to the other improvements, Waverly added a transcription feature to the Ambassador. When you finish a session you exist the app without saving the transcription. If you save a transcription, you can listen to or read it on the smartphone display later or you can export the transcription file in PDF format to read or print later.
This could be a valuable resource for healthcare professionals, as more and more patients in the U.S. are not native English speakers. A system like this eliminates the need to wait for a translator, and the transcription feature helps by generating a record of the conversation that can be shared with the patient. The Waverly Ambassador is available now on WaveryLabs‘ website.
