OrCam, an Israeli company working on augmented reality for the blind and vision impaired, has raised $30.4 million. According to Reuters, which broke the news, the round included Israeli insurer Clal Insurance and investment group Meitav Dash. The round takes the company's total funding to just over $130 million and place's the company's valuation at $1 billion. CEO Ziv Aviram told Reuters the...
San Diego-based Aira has raised $12 million to continue developing its smart glasses that combine AI and remote human agents to help blind and low-vision people navigate the world. JAZZ Venture Partners and Arboretum Ventures led the round and existing investors Lux Capital, ARCH Venture Partners and Felicis Ventures participated. The National Federation of the Blind joined the round as a...
IBM Research and Carnegie Mellon University are working on a smartphone app that would help blind and visually impaired people navigate their surroundings, by communicating information about the users surroundings to them via audio cues or vibrations.
The app, called NavCog, will initially be specific to the Carnegie Mellon campus, as it will rely on Bluetooth beacons placed around walkways and...
Ipplex, the holding company that serves as an umbrella company for iVisit, the video and mobile video company that works closely with the Wound Technology Network, has recently launched a new product, called LookTel for the visually impaired. LookTel, which used to be call SeeScan (see our original coverage from last year here) is an augmented reality scanning service that helps visually impaired...
iVisit's Eyal Binshtock recently produced a video demo of the company's SeeScan object recognition application, which the company plans to roll out soon to help the visually impaired. We recently wrote about iVisit's various applications for the visually impaired -- revisit the article here. Check out the one minute demo video below:
Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs recently offered a vision of future mobile applications that included enhanced reality where mobile phones can use location data and cameras to identify people and places. While Jacobs did not give a time frame for his vision's realization, it may be much sooner than he thinks.
If you ask iVisit, the precursor technology to the one Jacobs described will be available this...
