The owners of Moblieye a $15 billion company which was just bought by Intel this week have made a related start-up that will greatly assist the visually impaired. Professor Amnon Shashua and Ziv Aviram have invented glasses that will read texts and help identify people for the visually impaired and the blind.
The glasses have a mini camera in the corner and when the wearer commands it the camera can photograph texts in front of him and read it into his ear or identify the person standing in front of him according to pre-stored files that say who he is.
At this stage the glasses are able to deal only with written texts like newspapers computer or tablet screens, ingredient labels, outdoor signs and facial features.
Moran Mazuz, an Israeli singer famous for being on “A Star Is Born”, has been using these glasses for three months and acknowledges her improved quality of life. “This is a brilliant invention! These glasses upgraded my quality of life dramatically. When I was a university student I always depended on others to read me articles and when I went shopping I needed someone to read me the labels on products. Today I can read the paper with glases and this closes the gap between me and someone who could see on his own” Moran says.
It is estimated that about 140 million visually impaired people around the world can benefit from these glasses including 100,000 in Israel. The glasses are available through the OrCam website and they cost between 11,000 to 15,000 NIS.
These glasses as we said were developed by the founders of Mobileye, which develops and markets advance solutions for driving. Their system is based on software that analyzes the pictures from a single camera installed in the car which can in real time warn drivers of many potential collisions, a car swerving from its path and also controls the bright headlights automatically. This system functions as a “third eye” to assist the driver and prevent collisions. It is estimated that every day thousands of collisions are avoided due to this technology.