Professor says he was expelled from a Paris outlet for wearing self-designed vision system similar to Augmented Reality.

The French branch of McDonald’s said it was investigating claims by a Canadian inventor that he was assaulted in one of the chain’s Paris restaurants for wearing a computer vision system.

A spokesperson for McDonald’s France said on Tuesday that the company had opened a “thorough internal investigation” into the accusations and would “take appropriate measures” if necessary.

The corporation said on its Twitter account that they “take the claims very seriously, are in process of gathering info [and] ask for patience until all facts are known”.

Steve Mann, who invented and has worn the EyeTap computer vision system – similar to the Augmented Reality (AR) eyepiece being developed by tech giant Google – for the last 13 years, said he was confronted by three people he believed to be McDonald’s employees while eating at a branch on the Champs Elysees.

The professor at the University of Toronto wrote on his blog post that despite showing the employees medical and technical documentation, one of them “angrily grabbed [his] eyeglass, and tried to pull it off [his] head. The eyeglass is permanently attached and does not come off [his] skull without special tools”.

Mann, who posted photographs of the incident taken with the eyepiece on the same blog post, wrote that it was unclear why the men had taken offence.

“I’m not seeking to be awarded money,” he writes. “I just want my glass fixed, and it would also be nice if McDonald’s would see fit to support vision research.”