A participant at the APEC Young Entrepreneurs Conference tries out Rokid AI glasses. [Photo/Hangzhou Daily]

Wang Byung-min, a language student at Yiwu Industrial and Commercial College, tried Rokid AI glasses on Sept 17 at the "AI Technology and Applications" workshop of the APEC Young Entrepreneurs Conference in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. The glasses, which provide real-time translation, have led Wang to consider buying a pair for his father, who runs claw-machine stores in South Korea and travels between the two countries to source small commodities.

Wang said his father does not speak Chinese and relies on him for interpretation in Yiwu. The glasses also offer speech prompting and gaming functions, he said, adding that he was impressed by the pace of technological development in China.

The workshop brought together young entrepreneurs from APEC economies to explore next-generation human-computer interaction. Teams proposed using glasses to identify people and recall names during social encounters, while another developed AI cooking glasses that could assess ingredients and coordinate with smart-home devices to adjust heat.

Zhao Weiqi, head of Rokid's global developer ecosystem, said participants quickly grasped that glasses require applications built around cameras, microphones, sensors, and AI interaction rather than simply transferring smartphone apps.

Rokid, a company based in Hangzhou, has 35,000 independent developers and more than 5,000 enterprise developers across more than 100 countries and regions. The company hopes young developers can adapt its technology to local needs worldwide.