Smart Glasses for the Blind

Will smart glasses substitute guide dogs? A Romanian startup presented glasses that help visually impaired people to navigate unknown environments.

Transcript

00:00These smart glasses help blind people get around autonomously.

00:04They use cameras, lasers, motion sensors, GPS and AI to create a live 3D map of user surroundings.

00:12It's updated over 100 times a second.

00:15We built a self-driving car, but not one which drives on the road, but actually one which you wear on your head in order to guide you.

00:21The glasses rely on gentle vibrations on the forehead to steer users around obstacles, voice and audio cues

00:27alert the user to nearby objects like stairs, crosswalks or a bus stop.

00:32If a guide dog works by pulling your hand, avoiding you from obstacles and taking care of you,

00:36what we do is the same, but we don't pull your hand, we are on your head, so we actually pull your head using haptics.

00:42The Romanian startup's developers say the glasses were tested by over 400 visually impaired users across 40 countries.

00:50The first orders are already being worked on and come with a price tag of $10,000 per device.