Introducing NIIRA Smart Glasses: Transformative Mobility Solution for the Visually Impaired

Yeah, exactly what I was thinking. Another one? How many of these things do we really need? Granted, it sounds like they all do slightly different things in different ways, but I'm still not fully convinced.

tells me this is very close to something that has been discussed here before; vOICe being loaded into a smartglass. https://eyesynth.com/?lang=en
Though I think they've totally ignored the speech part which all options till now have relied on.

It's good to see innovation trying. I still find Glide the most interesting because it is trying to go beyond sound. Most solutions, and this has been true for a long time, pick sound and only sound. While on the surface it makes some sense, it's the easiest, it's the next most common sense to observe the most information, it does has drawbacks that I wish more would take into account. For example, some of us do not have perfect/normal hearing. The world is also a noisy place already even for those who can hear. I question the usefulness of this even for someone with normal hearing, let alone someone like me.

I'd not mind checking this out in sight village some time either this year or next but they don't have map functions, I really do need them.

I messaged them about their images not being labeled correctly, to be fair; they did get back to me very quickly.

They do talk about adding more features going ahead. If they are the kind of folks that engage with the community, we sure can keep pushing.
The way I see it, this glasses are about "augmenting the sense" of hearing, as they themselves put it. Like I don't know, there will come a time when you will not need a special map functionality, instead, you could look at the map in your screen, and hear it. But the learning curve will kind of be big.
I hope someone will direct them to this website so that they can directly engage in the discussion...

I'm interested to know how the bone conduction works in a glasses format. I'm guessing there are actuators coming down from the arms just in front of the ear. I believe that bone conduction requires some clapping force to work so I also wonder about fatigue.

still, it's all good. Eventually one will eat the rest and we'll have the go to face computers we've all dreamed of. I would very much like to have The VOICE on some smart glasses. I nearly built some using a raspberry pi and wired video glasses but that and then learning how to see with sound felt like too much of a steep hill to climb.

An in-depth, comprehensive comparison of all the similar products with a detailed overview of the key strengths and weaknesses of each, is what I definitely need the most at this point. Individual reviews for each product is cool, but what could be better is one single post where all of them are discussed with references and links to those posts where each product is reviewed in more detail. I can't even afford only one of them, let alone each and every one of them, so I would at least like to be able to know which one I would pick if I could. I don't really have that much money to spare to try them all and let most go to waste.

I think if we set some clear guidelines on how to compare the glasses, we could take quite a bit of the subjectivity out of it. Of course, there will always be some. But we can set a table of criteria to evaluate against, and people who own a particular product could contribute. I just got my Seleste glasses, I was planning to write a detailed overview about it, but I could do that part of the comparison.
I would be happy to host it on my site or in a Google Sheet, unless you have a better idea, and if anybody is willing to volunteer to describe any other glasses they have, I'll be happy to coordinate. Message me privately if you are interested, and we can get back here with the final results.

I've been looking for some demonstrations but no luck so far. Their youtube channel has a few videos but all are in spanish.

Yeah; the learning curve is going to be a little steap, but then, it could be much more useful than, say, a seleste glass if one's trained early enough/has some reason to try to climb the steap curve. The difference I see is, in all other devices, an outside intellegent entity is giving you the describtions which comes with the danger of halusinations, subjectivity etc. But here, as I understand it, it'll be your brain that'll be doing all the heavy-lifting.

Let us remember that this is just like as if mainstream devices were released. It is competition; This has been something that has going on for years, both in mainstream technology and assistive technology. As such, do not expect to see just one pair of glasses, that one note taker, and just one braille display.

I completely agree, it's all to do with competition.

It will slow down of course, but I'd expect to see more of this stuff for the next couple of years.

Hello, I am bilingual
One of my friends who lives in Spain has made an article in Spanish
I found out about this glasses technology few months ago from one of my friends who is Jaime Franco, he has been using the glasses for a few months and he is the creator of the following article, his analysis is very complete
I will paste the link below
Once you have opened the article in your favorite browser, you just have to translate from the website into your preferred language.
Of course, everyone as a user should know that this manufacturer' website is not so honest in its description, it is missing quite a few things that you will only understand after having read my friend article.

https://www.infotecnovision.com/analisis-de-las-gafas-niira-innovador-sistema-de-reconocimiento-espacial-en-tiempo-real-para-personas-ciegas-y-con-baja-vision/

I used Microsoft Edge. A note: when using the H key, you'll get the other language but if you arrow up then down, the translation should be heard.

These glasses aren't for me, perhaps i'm to old or want more features but perhaps someone who is younger might enjoy using them.

The article explains things in detail; and it's got a link to a youtube video also which I'm yet to check out.
As I see it, this is designed primarily as a mobility aid rather than as a smart glass. Would have been more interesting if it could also give image describtions/read text etc (though it says image describtions are coming). A mobility aid also makes more sense to me if it can read signs, menues etc. The best solution, as has been said before, would be the meta glasses to allow something like vOICe to be loaded into it.

Hi there!
I'm Antonio Quesada, CEO at Eyesynth. I appreciate every comment here. There are many questions in the air... but to summarize some of them:

- The glasses are intended to be a mobility aid.
- The system uses sound to express the space.
- The vOICe can analyze one or two images per second... which is not realtime. NIIRA does 60 images per second in real time.
- NIIRA uses voice for system messages and AI image description.

Please understand we are a small team, so we have a lot of tasks to complete. One is making instructional videos (in English too) showing our technology. We are working on that. Anyway, Laura (Head of Customer Support) and myself will be glad to answer your questions. You can contact at (please excuse the antispam wording) support(at)eyesynth(dot)com.
To finish I will reccommend Jaime's article (@MarkSarch you were quick!). The article is deep and accurate.
I hope to be in close contact with the blind community internationally, as we are expanding. Let's get in touch.
Thanks!

Thanks for posting the review. Wow there is a lot of detail in there. I just skipped to the final thoughts for now but might go back and read some more if I get some time. I actually really liked the way he seemed to suggest that using these glasses was like Forza or something and made it more enjoyable to walk about. That's a really intriguing way to put it. I'd dismissed these until I read that.

Glasses are absolutely my favourite type of wearable. I only stopped wearing regular glasses a few years ago so it's really natural to just carry on. However, I can only really wear one pair at once. So I guess I would have to choose between, say, the Metas or these which makes me feel a bit anxious. Unless I can balance one on top of the other. It would be somewhat ironic that now I don't have to wear glasses at all that I truly would look like four eyes.

I also do worry about the learning curve vs my DECREPIT brain. When playing the last of us part 2 I did keep forgetting what all the noises meant so I was in the audio glossary all the time. Maybe this would be too boring, but it would be great to have like a standardised list of sounds so that they can be reused both in gaming but also in something like this. It would mean I could justify an Xbox and copy of Forza and call it mobility training. (I am presuming that the sounds are different but haven't dug that far yet)

I don't suppose this will be a list of sounds as such; because in that case the number of sounds in a real-life situation would be too large. I guess this is rather like, say, waveforms, white noise assuming different qualities based on things around us.

You might be right. As usual I am commenting without really knowing enough to warrant it!

I thought there might be certain different sounds - e.g. a pedestrian might be different to some random obstacle vs maybe if I'm coming up to a road or something.

Anyway will try to find the time to read the entire review and will put my xbox order on hold for now.