A Dutch startup is working with Google Glass to create a set of AI-powered glasses that #blinden and #slechtzienden help to see. The glasses extract visual information from images of people, possessions and public transport, and then talk about it aloud. It can read text from books, name friends by analyzing their faces, and describe environments such as train signs and street dangers. The wearer could use the glasses to read a recipe from a cookbook, go to the supermarket, find ingredients on the shelves, and then return home to prepare the dish.



The tool was developed by Envision, a company based in The Hague. Envision claims that the software is the fastest and most accurate OCR (Optical Character Recognition) available and is capable of reading text from over 60 languages scribbled on any type of surface, from food labels to handwriting.
New life for Google Glass?
Envision developed the software for the highly accused Google Glass, which flopped as a consumer product, but lives on in the company as a hands-free computer assistant in warehouses and factory floors. Pre-orders for the smart glasses began today, at a reduced starting price of $1,699. They will retail for $2.099 as soon as shipping begins in August 2020.
The price tag puts the product out of reach for many of the estimated 253 million lives with visual impairment, but it can dramatically improve the independence of those who can afford. It can even prove that Google Glass was not such a bad idea after all.

Google's AI-powered smart glasses help the blind see