Samsung to Show Off Smart Glasses and Directional Speaker at CES

Samsung today offered a peek at three new projects brewing inside its in-house idea incubator Creative Lab (C-Lab).

The tech giant plans to show off the projects -- a portable directional speaker dubbed Sound Ray (S-Ray), a device called GoBreath that can help people with lung damage, and a pair of smart eyeglasses with an accompanying app called Relúmino -- at CES in Las Vegas next week.

Samsung first showed off its Relúmino app at Mobile World Congress last year, and now the team behind it has developed a pair of smart eyeglasses that can "help people with vision challenges see images clearer when they are reading a book or viewing an object," the company wrote in anews release.

"The glasses work in conjunction with a smartphone, utilizing its processors and batteries, which makes Relúmino glasses light and comfortable to wear," Samsung explained. "The smartphone processes images from videos projected through the camera of the glasses, and the processed images are floated into the display of the Relúmino glasses to help the wearer see things better."

Meanwhile, the GoBreath recovery solution is for those suffering from postoperative pulmonary complications. Developed by a doctor at the Samsung Medical Center, the portable device and mobile app aim to teach patients techniques such as inhalation, coughing and deep breathing.

"Patients can refer to exercise guidelines and check how well their lungs have recovered through the app," Samsung wrote. "GoBreath even offers a web and cloud service for doctors to help them monitor their patients' recovery progress as well as provide reminders to practice."

Finally, S-Ray aims to let you listen to music or podcasts without having to wear uncomfortable earphones, or annoying others around you by playing music over a Bluetooth speaker. Existing directional speakers are "primarily stationary due to their size and price," Samsung says, but S-Ray is "much smaller, lighter and portable…while maintaining the advantages of conventional directional speakers and/or earphones."

Besides those three projects, seven startups that have spun out of C-Lab will showcase newly released products that are hitting the market. Those startups include Linkflow, Kitten Planet, lululab, Kidsoft, Mangoslab, Innomdle lab and analogue plus.

"Since launching five years ago, our C-Lab program has gained exciting momentum across Samsung, helping foster an innovation culture, and providing avenue for our creative, talented employees to pursue innovative new projects," Vice President and Head of Samsung's Creativity & Innovation Center Jaiil Lee said in a statement. "We will continuously introduce innovative projects through our C-Lab program."