AR for the Blind Is Straight out of Star Trek
June 8, 2018
By: Greg Nichols
Source: ZD Net
Augmented reality could help the legally blind see.
That’s the promise of Canadian company eSight, which showcased its latest technology at the recent Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, the industry’s main trade show.
Vision-impaired users wear eSight like a pair of glasses. It gets bonus points for bearing a passing resemblance to the VISOR device worn by Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
A front-facing high-definition camera on the headset captures everything in the user’s normal field of vision. Images are projected in real-time on near-eye displays.
The glasses are custom made to the wearer’s prescription, and the lenses are overlaid with transparent OLED (organic LED) displays. The displays can be adjusted to fill the entire field of vision or just a portion, like bifocals.