Navigation Glasses Allow Blind People To See Through Audio

I can’t help but marvel over some innovators’ ability to take technology and turn it into something almost otherworldly. We have seen examples of this many times here on Bit Rebels when we’ve featured gadgets almost too good to be true. We have featured quite a few helpful accessories over the years for blind people. What I am about to share with you today could possibly be the most significant one. These are navigation glasses that allow blind people to see through audio.

It might sound weird explaining it like that, especially without using the phrase “using audio” instead of “through audio,”  but you will understand when you see what this impressive concept can actually do. The navigation glasses are actually a tool that could help blind people become more aware of their surroundings. These are a form of Google glasses, but they have their own little twist to them. These glasses don’t have any cool incorporated screens or see-through viewfinders, quite the opposite.

The navigation glasses are more focused around the audio aspect of your surrounding reality. Through a strategically placed microphone, they use several detectors and sensors. The glasses scan the surroundings using audio, and then tell the wearer exactly what is around him or her. The details can easily be put together into a significantly more detailed picture than that if they were to use a blind stick for example.

These navigation glasses even have peripheral detection, which makes these “glasses” a whole lot more impressive since the wearer will be able to get a complete and immersive picture of the immediate surroundings. The wearer can even communicate with these glasses in order to pinpoint objects or obstacles in order to get an update about where they are in proximity to him or her.

The downside of this innovation is of course that so far this is only a concept design put together by designer Xu Guang-suo. However, with a little bit of funding and time, this could definitely make it into a real product that could help blind people navigate through our world very much like people who are not blind, meaning no more blind sticks are needed. How wonderful technology can be sometimes!

Xu Guang-suo’s Concept Navigation Glasses

Via: [Yanko Design]