Karthik Kannan, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Envision, speaks
to NCBI Labs about the Envision AI Smart Glasses. Lightweight and designed
to be worn all day, these innovative glasses use AI to describe surroundings
to blind and visually impaired people in real time.
Q1. Can you start by telling us about Envision, what they do and what
products and services they provide?
Envision builds tools for people with a visual impairment to live more
independently using AI.
Primarily, we build smart glasses (The Envision Glasses) that help people
read text, in over 60 languages including handwritten text, recognize faces,
objects and even make video calls from them. We also have a free, companion
app called Envision AI, available on both iOS & Android.
Envision Glasses provide a very simple, unobtrusive way of accessing visual
information in your surroundings. You don't need to hold a smartphone in
your hand and point it around. With the Glasses, you can look around, in a
handsfree manner and it speaks out the visual information (such as text,
objects, faces, etc.) in front of you.
Q2. Can you describe for us the Envision Glasses and how they work?
Envision Glasses look like any other pair of glasses. It contains a
wide-angle camera, touchpad, an onboard speaker, microphones and powerful
processors.
The Glasses have a screen reader which is very similar to VoiceOver or
Talkback. Apart from touch gestures, the Glasses can also be operated purely
with voice commands.
The Glasses come with 5-8 hours of battery life and also support USB-C fast
charging. The Glasses can be also put in standby mode which gives it 12-16
hours of battery life. You can also connect the Glasses to any Bluetooth
headphones or speakers (like the AirPods).
The Glasses are lightweight (weighs just 50 grams in total) and can be worn
like a regular pair of glasses, all day. They can easily connect to your
WiFi network indoors or also connect to the hotspot on your phone.
Q3. Who are these glasses designed for?
The Glasses are designed for people across the visual impairment spectrum.
There are people who've been fully blind since birth using the Glasses as
well as folks with low vision.
Yes, there's a bit more of a learning curve for people with 100% visual
impairment but there are features within the Glasses (such as Document
Guidance) in order to help them use the Glasses effectively.
The Glasses are also designed for all age groups (and all levels of tech
savviness).
With the launch of the voice commands, Envision Glasses can also be used
with people who've some amount of motor impairment.
Q4. Is there much set-up involved?
The Glasses can be used entirely as a standalone device. It doesn't need to
be used with a smartphone. The Glasses do need to be paired with the
Envision App once. Using the App you can easily customize the features of
the Glasses.
Though there are some features in the Glasses that require an internet
connection, many features can be used entirely offline such as reading text,
recognizing objects, etc.
When you first purchase the Envision Glasses, you'll get a free 90 minute
onboarding session where a representative from the Envision team will help
you set up the Glasses. Also, you can always reach out to the Envision team
from within the app to request a call.
Q5. What are the key features of the glasses?
The Glasses does many things well but it does read text exceptionally well.
They're capable of reading 60 different languages (including Irish). It can
read handwritten text in all these languages. The Glasses are also capable
of reading text from curved surfaces like bottles, etc. You can also export
the text you scan with the Glasses to your smartphone easily.
Apart from excelling at reading text, another unique feature of the Glasses
is the video calling feature, called Envision Ally. The Ally feature allows
you to make video calls directly from your Glasses to a friend or a family
member. It's an incredibly useful feature when you want to get help from a
fellow human as opposed to using AI. Some examples of people using this
feature include getting help with cooking, picking the right outfit before a
date and much more.
You can also use the Envision Glasses to recognize faces of friends or
family members, recognise your personal belongings, currencies or even
detect the amount of light in a room.
Envision pushes out constant updates to the Glasses and these updates are
available free of cost to anyone purchasing the Glasses.
Q6. Do any of these features work offline?
Almost 70% of the Glasses features work entirely offline. For example, many
reading functions of the Glasses work offline(including Irish). Recognizing
objects, currencies, etc. also work offline.
Certain features like scan documents or books and video calling requires an
internet connection as of now. Our focus at Envision is to bring more
features offline, giving people the option to switch modes as desired and
our future updates will focus on these.
Q7. Any developments coming down the line for the Envision Glasses?
We have many exciting developments in the pipeline for the rest of 2022. Our
biggest updates are going to be bringing some of your most loved apps onto
the Envision Glasses platform. We're currently in talks with Aira and other
navigation apps to build apps for the Envision Glasses and they'll be rolled
out starting from August 2022.
So, when you buy the Envision Glasses it'll be akin to buying an iOS or
Android device which brings its own AppStore or Play Store along with it.
We also have some big improvements to the recently launched voice commands,
increasing the number of objects it can recognize and many more exciting
additions.
Q8. How can someone receive a demonstration or trial of the glasses?
You can get a free, 1:1 demonstration of the Envision Glasses by requesting
a demo from us on our website. The link is:
https://www.letsenvision.com/envision-glasses-demo-form.
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