If you were to go to this year’s Royal Society Summer ScienceExhibition there would be so many things to see. But from our point of view the one thing that caught our imagination is the set of glasses that has inside the technology you normally see in devices like smartphones and some of thegame consoles. I think from this description you can see why we are so focused on this subject.
In fact if we think a little better about this exhibition we do realize this isn’t a presentation about the latest technologies that are launched by Apple or what Android version was just released the other day. In the glass sector we are speaking about a simple and yet complicated pair of glasses with only one purpose: to help those who have a poor vision and give them a more normal life that you and I enjoy.
When we normally associate a pair of glasses with technology found in smartphones and things that involving gaming you can realize the element between these two can only be composed of different video cameras, tracking software, some type of face recognition, position detectors and last but not least some depth sensors. The people at Oxford have managed to implement all these things in what everybody normally uses and that is a pair of glasses. These glasses can be used by people who suffer from impartial blindness and have some vision left or their view is cloudy or blurry and can’t process things at 100%.
This pair of glasses is appropriate when it comes to common types of visual impediment composing of things like age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. In a research made by the same institute they have found that around 30% of people what are 75 years old or older have some early signs of blindness caused by age-related macular degeneration. Also, when we speak about this segment of people, around 7% of them have presented a more advanced form.
This is where the glasses will come very handy because of the video cameras mounted at the corners, cameras that will capture the thing that the owner is looking at. Also the information received from the cameras will be displayed in form of some tiny lights embedded in the see-through lenses of the glasses which will offer some extra feedback about the targeted object.
The recognition of the object can be traced back to smartphone technology. I think you already tried different apps that when you take a photo for example recognize where you are or what you do and at the same time give information about the targeted object. This information when it comes to glasses will offer a nice aid when trying to navigate in a room. It will pick the most relevant things and will offer information to people.
This happens because as we already know when having a conversation eye contact is one of the most important things to establish a relationship with the other person. Also I think we all realize that wearing a ridiculous pair of glasses in public may make the wearer a little uncomfortable.
The ability for other people to see through display will make a better communication why on the other said of the glass different colored lights appear, giving much information to the owner. Like for example you can have different colors for people or object while the brightness of things can inform you about how close or far are the object you could interact with.
Also with the progress made Dr. Stephan is pretty sure we will reach a point where things like reading the news headlines will be possible. He has named this ability as optical character recognition, a feature that will allow knowing a computer headline and realizing this is different from a video image for example. Also the pair of glasses will have on them earphones that will explain information and will make the wearer aware of dynamic things. Also in most smartphones there are barcodes reader implemented. A similar system could be implemented at some point, a thing that will make buying normal products an everyday thing.
But with so much technology the price is not cheap. To be the proud owner of such a product you will have to pay around £500. But if you make a comparison, in order to train a guide dog people have to pay around £25-30,000. So I think the difference is obvious.
Although many could consider the information will be too hard to learn especially by older people studies have demonstrated the capabilities of the brain. Also the doctor said that same as physiotherapy, the pair of glasses need to be tailored for individual players in order to improve at the full potential the vision of members.
People will have at their disposal a giant screen with video images of the exhibition floor itself will show all the required information. Also there is a small display added to the lens, a display that will offer people the needed information to find their way and make the required tasks they want. Also for people to actually see things in work there is an early prototype of transparent LED array for the eventual glasses will also be on display.
Last but not least, all of this is still at an early stage and we can call this project still a prototype. But at the same time this is one of the main focus points at the Royal Society’s exhibition. The funds for this project come from the National Institute of Health Research and some actual studies have shown the product will have some real person testing later this year.
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