Video goggles and glasses have been on the market for years now and universally they all have a few things in common. They all block your vision completely for anything going on around you and they all look really silly when you wear them. Brother is more known for printers than anything else, but the company has pulled the wraps off an interesting new product called the AirScouter.

Brother apparently leveraged tech it owns in the printer business to design the AirScouter unit. The device is a projector that is connected to a plain looking pair of clear glasses. Rather than having tiny LCDs like most video glasses today, that little projector shines images directly on the retina of the eye. That sounds very strange to me.

The image shined on the retina looks as large to the wearer as a 16-inch screen viewed from three feet away. The coolest part about these glasses is that the image projected on the eye doesn't block your vision. Brother plans to launch the glasses in Japan for industrial use. I can see these things overlaying schematics for a generator right on the machinery for a maintenance worker to use.