Paragliding Glass App Making Flight Safer

An academic team at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences is aiming to improve the safety in the extreme sport of paragliding, and the team is looking at Google Glass to help. The team of students have already developed an app as part of their bachelor thesis to assist paragliding pilots while in the air.

“Many pilots do cross-country flying [across] long distances, and they cannot memorize all of the obstacles,” says Karl Rege, professor of Computer Science at ZHAW and head of the development team, “They, hence, require a device that indicates the obstacles.”

OK Glass, let’s go gliding…

The app displays a map that tracks the wearer’s path during flight, as well as showing necessary flight information such as the pilot’s rise and sink rates, current altitude above sea level, and ground speed. This leaves the pilot’s hands free to operate the glider.

Locations of potentially dangerous cables, such as ski lift cabling and power lines, are plotted on the map in red. If the pilot ventures too close to a dangerous area, Glass provides visual and verbal warnings as well as what direction the hazardous area is located so the pilot can steer away from danger.

Although Glass is not available in Switzerland, Karl Rege’s team was able to obtain the device from a US contact. “We told Google what we were doing, and they are also very enthusiastic,” explains Professor Rege, “The Google folks like what we’ve done, and they fully support us now.”

Check out the video below the see the paragliding Glassware in action:



photo credit: marcovdz via photopin cc