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Parsee has developed a prototype of the battery-powered glasses
which have a 3D printed frame, internet protocol camera and
earphone.
Pushing a button on the frame, users take pictures of an object
in front of them, which the camera sends to a mobile phone app.
The app identifies shapes, colors, text as well as faces and
sends details about the image via audio to the earphone.
"It helps (the blind and visually impaired) in their everyday
living like reading newspapers, drinking juice," Parsee project
manager Bartosz Trzcinski said.
Parsee, which began as a family project to help a relative, has
begun fundraising and has a $25,000 goal to complete research
and development of a sleeker model of the glasses.
The project is still in the early stages of its longer-term
goals of mass production and free distribution.
The current cost of producing one pair of glasses is $300 -- a
figure Parsee aims to reduce once it has funds, demand and
production in place.
Similar high-tech projects are in the works elsewhere. Britain's
Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has been working
with researchers on making smart glasses, to retail at less than
300 pounds ($433), that help wearers identify shapes and
determine distance, its website says.
(Reporting By Reuters Television in Warsaw; Writing by
Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Toby Davis)
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