Innovation

A Portable, Wearable Visual System for Blind and Visually Impaired Persons

OrCam is an Israeli start-up company, founded in 2010. The mission of OrCam is to develop a "portable, wearable visual system with 'human-like' capabilities" for blind and visually impaired persons, via the use of artificial computer intelligence and augmented reality.

The OrCam device is a small camera worn in the style of Google Glass, connected by a thin cable to a portable computer designed to fit in the wearer's pocket. The system clips on to the wearer's glasses with a small magnet and uses a bone-conduction speaker to offer clear speech as it reads aloud the words or object pointed to by the user.

The system is designed to both recognize and speak "text in the wild," a term used to describe newspaper articles as well as bus numbers, and objects as diverse as landmarks, traffic lights, and the faces of friends.

The OrCam device is also drastically different from Google Glass, which also offers the wearer a camera but is designed for people with [unimpaired] vision and has limited visual recognition and local computing power.

Although the system is usable by persons who are blind, OrCam is initially planning to sell the device to people in the United States who are visually impaired or have low vision.