From phasers to tractor beams, it seems as if ‘Star Trek’ is influencing the latest technological innovations this day and age.

The next piece of sci-fi tech that will soon become a reality is the Universal Translator.

(For those of you not in the know, in the series, the Universal Translator was the reason why all aliens were able to speak English.)

Now, a device called Sigmo will soon be available in January 2014. Sigmo is a tiny device that looks like a pillbox that you wear around your neck. It has both a speaker and microphone, plus a connection to a cloud computing system.

The Sigmo works like this:

You choose which language you would like to be translated into. You hold the Sigmo up and speak into it. The Sigmo then records your voice and sends your sentence to the cloud where it is translated using programs like Google Translate. Your translated sentence is sent back to the Sigmo using a Bluetooth connection with your smartphone and blammo! You just communicated with someone whose language you don’t know! Let’s just hope you have a good internet connection.

Check out the Sigmo in action in this video:

As you can see, the Sigmo gizmo can be useful in many types of situations, including getting directions and ordering in restaurants. This sounds like a pretty nifty device for those of you who wish to boldly go where no man has gone before!

Source: Mashable