Motorola’s Project Maxwell Pendant Is Just the Beginning of its Experimental Wearables Journey
Maybe it’s my refusal to buy into the idea that everyone will be a spec wearer in the future, but I always appreciate it when companies think about other wearables based on AI to smart glasses. That’s why I was excited to get hands-on time with Motorola’s Project Maxwell at MWC in Barcelona this week, after missing out on seeing it at CES back in January.
Project Maxwell is a hanging pin/paint that looks like a pebble with a camera and microphone that acts as a conscious companion. It hangs around your neck, seeing what you see and hearing what you hear. Absolutely not, says Mohammed Abdul-Gaffoor, senior director of engineering who leads the Motorola 312 Labs test, an attempt to change your phone.
This is perhaps where previous attempts to create autonomous AI devices, such as the Humane AI pin, have failed. But Project Maxwell is part of a new collection of AI wearables, also including the Plaud AI Pin and the Looki L1 logging pendant, which take advantage of advanced language models and agent AI to provide new information. Abdul-Gafoor is the first to admit that the PIN concept is not new, but this is perhaps the first time that a major player in the mobile phone market has put any weight behind the idea.
“What it allows you to do is go straight up, hands-free and be present,” he tells me at MWC. Wearing a proof-of-concept device around his neck, Abdul-Gaffoor shows me how he can read a menu in a foreign language and make recommendations about dishes he might like based on its knowledge of his preferences. As another wearable AI, it can also provide turn-by-turn directions and translate a real-time conversation between two people speaking different languages.
But Abdul-Gaffoor also encourages me to think carefully about how Project Maxwell might be integrated into a wider ecosystem of AI-enabled devices, rather than as a way to interact with Motorola’s intelligent assistant Qira. It also acts as a learning sensor, collecting data about your health, preferences and surroundings that can provide your other devices with context.
It was important to tap into the voice and the idea to bring this project to life, as it is a natural way for people to communicate, said Abdul-Gaffoor. “We used to manage without that by typing or writing or touching over the years – because of the limitations of technology,” he said. “But technology is now coming to the point where we can use those methods of communication with people.”
Motorola wants its wearables to feel comfortable and familiar.
Equally important was the look and feel of the device, which sits comfortably in the palm of your hand, is soft to the touch and comes in a variety of colors and patterns (off-white is my personal favourite). “Whatever people want to wear, it’s something they have to get used to,” Abdul-Gaffoor said. “And again whatever they put in their bodies, it needs to be … not geeky stuff.”
Dating back to the original days of the Razr, Motorola has also had a knack for iconic design. Today that’s echoed in collaborations with Pantone and Swarovski, and more recently in the luxurious look and feel of the Motorola Razr Fold.
Motorola’s test method
As cool as Project Maxwell is as a standalone concept, it also shows Motorola’s extensive experimental approach to the emerging AI wearables space that leaves me excited for what might come next.
On the first day of MWC, Qualcomm presented its new wearable chip Snapdragon Wear Elite, promising that it will be in devices from Google, Samsung and Motorola. For Google and Samsung, this will, at least initially, mean the next generation of their smartwatches. But it looks like Motorola is thinking bigger.
The proof-of-concept device is already powered by a Qualcomm chip.
Project Maxwell is currently powered by an earlier wearable chip, but the increased power of the Wear Elite and the ability to process locally on the device opens up new opportunities for Motorola to try beyond what it has already done. “The Wear Elite platform will allow us to fully explore concepts like Maxwell and go even further — even beyond what we’ve shown so far,” said Francois LaFlamme, Motorola’s vice president and chief marketing officer speaking at Qualcomm’s launch event.
It’s not yet clear what these other concepts might be, but through his work at 312 Labs, Abdul-Gaffoor has a history of working on unique concepts like Motorola’s foldable phone, not to mention its rollable phone. The company is exploring many different ideas, he tells me. “I can’t explain specifics about it, but everything, as part of our lab work, we explore those different ideas and experiences and then there are aspects of the form.”
This sounds like just the beginning of wearable AI. Smart glasses and smartwatches will no doubt continue to dominate the conversation at large, but pins, pendants and other yet-to-be-invented devices all have a chance here to win us over — and Motorola is one of the big players leading the charge right now.
