Wewalk 2nd generation smart cane introduced.

I don't see the point in adding gpt4 to this? Does it have a camra'?

no so it can't see where you are going just for people ask it questions like when is the next bus? okay, useful but just waste money so we pay 749 for a cane, which we can't use until october till its full potential and even that is a monthly fee? glide will be so much better.

The first version of this felt like it hadn't been developed with any input from anyone blind at all - I knew about the inability to take it out in the rain, but not that it had touch controls as well.

I can't say I've ever felt that the one thing my existing cane was missing was the ability to hallucinate what's in front of me. I can't really think of any reason why I need GPT in there, but I guess I'm going to end up with gpt in my toothbrush before long so I suppose it is inevitable. I suppose if I get lonely on a walk I can have a pretend someone to talk to at the end of my stick.

But beyond all that, there is absolutely no way I am paying that much for a cane. Recently I spent £65 on a graphite cane after my wife bought me a Huju tip not realising it wouldn't work with my existing cane. So this was almost £100 worth of cane. I had it for about 2 or 3 months before a cyclist ran over it, snapping both the tip and the end of the cane. It was upsetting at that price, let alone the cost of something like this.

Anyway I guess if this turns out to be the answer to all my prayers then I could be convinced so I will keep my ear out for info about it, but can't see myself going anywhere near something like this.

I suppose this cane might be useful for some people with auditory issues, such as difficulty with directional and echo location, in addition to blindness. How many of us have multiple layers of disability with the blind thing just being the most noticeable? Something like that might make the cost seem more reasonable.
Your bicycle incident makes me cringe. Back in college, the 90s, I had only one aluminum cane, a folder, and it got stuck in the spokes of a guy's wheelchair. We managed to bend the cane back to a somewhat usable angle, but that was all I had for several months. I have no idea what it did to his spokes.
There have been a few innovations in the cane over my blind lifetime, the addition of graphite folders and the telescoping cane being my favorites. A lot of things never really took off, like the counter weight crook, attachable with a set screw, for rigid, aluminum canes, and those folding aluminum canes that had a steel cord and a tightening lever to make them extra rigid and extra heavy. I'm sticking by my experience that a dirt-stupid stick and the skills to use it are more reliable than all the mobility light sabers, ultrasound,-bat glasses of the past and now AI canes or guide vacuum cleaners they've come up with so far.

Well certainly I'd say my mobility skills aren't amazing and I don't think I have any grasp of echolocation at all. It still feels to me more like a super power than something a mere mortal can possess.

I don't think the only sensation you get from a cane is auditory though - admittedly I've not tried to use it without being able to hear, but there's plenty of haptic feedback as the ball rolls around the ground.

I think I am a little torn between feeling that I could maybe use a bit of help and then feeling that perhaps it is a cop out and that I should just improve my general skills. But I would be interested to know if this sort of thing is genuinely helpful. I can't really imagine that getting haptic feedback in the same hand that is already getting effectively the same thing in a natural way is going to be something I could cope with.

I also think version 1 left a bit of a bad taste. Imagine trying to sell a cane in the UK which can't cope with rain. So I can use it for, what, two days a year if I'm lucky? And I would always have to have a spare with me in case 5 minutes in the glorious sunshine suddenly disappears.

Anyway, not meaning to just jump in here and be negative. This sort of thing is interesting so I'll be interested to hear the opinion of someone who is both blind and has tried it.

I am also really curious about how they managed to find a way to wedge GPT into it and what value the speaker has. It feels to me that glasses are a much better fit for that kind of thing, and much less likely to get run over by a cyclist.

Yes, mr grieves, you are correct that the primary feedback from a cane is through extending the sense of touch through direct contact and vibration. Sound shadows and the like, with or without the noise of a cane, extend perception out beyond and above the sweep of the cane to some degree. I thought the haptics of this cane were giving an extended reach, but I might be misunderstanding this. This particular cane may very well turn out to be useless to everyone, or there may be additional disabilities that it helps that you and I aren't thinking of. Are there non-blindness disabilities that GPT can help? I have no idea.
Back in my early 20s, I had an ear infection that closed off one ear and greatly affected the other for a month or so. It through my perception of where things were located way off. I had a lot of time to think about what I might do with diminished hearing while I waited for the antibiotics to do their thing. I still think about it from time to time, though my hearing is fine.

Well some will get it and some will not. Some will like it and some will not.

It's a shame you can't simply use an old tree branch lying around, isn't it? If it's long enough, it could do the trick. I tried it out at a friend's place once. Just used it to stroll around their yard, but surprisingly, it worked. And if a car or bike happened to run over it, well, you could always find another one. The only drawback would be its lack of foldability. But I guess we'd attract even more attention if we went that route.

On a more serious note regarding echolocation, I've found that it doesn't work where there are pets, small children, sometimes both lol.

And it's a skill that develops over a long period of time.

I've heard of people that can't do it on the Double Tap podcast, both the hosts and the listeners, and the one thing I found in commen was they lost their sight later in life.

Maybe I'm wrong, and there are people out there that lost their sight later and are able to do it.

I've been blind since birth, technically, too much oxygen damaged my eyes so now I can only see a tiny bit of light, enough to tell between day and night.

I tried out the Miniguide once, and my echo location was able to pick up the obstacles before the Miniguide.

While this sounds interesting, I'd hate for a car or bike to run over it.

$600 down the drain.

Or if you're in Australia, $1,427.00.

That's assuming Perplexity gave me the correct price.

pay almost what I would pay for a new iphone in a cane? Why would I do that?

So on Double Tap last night they were talking about how this can be used for mobility training. So it can record all sorts of metrics about how you use the cane, how you are sweeping it and so on. And I thought this was actually quite interesting.

I think the potential for devices like this is that they can make your mobility skills worse if you start to depend on them instead of developing the basics. But actually if this could help you improve your cane skills then that feels like a more solid advantage to using one.

They were saying that this data would be able to be used by mobility trainers who could then do remote training sessions, but I wonder if actually this sort of thing could feed into the whole AI system and you could get pointers or help from our benevolent robot overlords.

Still not at that price, and maybe that benefit might be more a short term thing but I thought it was an interesting use case.

Personally the first time I saw a video on this thing, the only good thing was it would slide down a few inches when you hit an obstacle. I really just think the dude invented this because he jammed himself in the balls. come on, the old crook handle style did the same with me in the snow when I was growing up. Ugh. Still 600 bucks to look even more like an idiot? Nah I'm good thanks. :)

I love tech, but I also know it is fickle. Develope mobility skills and social skills (the ability to ask for help without shame), and they'll never suffer from no signal, a flat battery, be dampened by rain or cost you £800.

Augment, of course, but only when you've got your foundation skills in place. this cane really isn't for me. I'm interested to find out what Glidance is like but, even then, I don't know if I'll get on board with that. Seems like it's good for smooth open spaces, but rugged pavements, stairs, puddles, GPS dead spots and places with a lack of mapping, it doesn't sound great. I always find myself in fringe circumstances where such things struggle.

I tried the first version and it's not for me.

It was interesting that google maps or whatever it was was built in but it was heavy and just wasn't my kind of thing.

I'll probably look into this when sight village comes around, that's if they even have it, but I doubt I'll buy it.

I wouldn't say no to a trile though.

My WC is over 10 years old and it still work well. Foldable came and is nice. Also can serve as a weapon if some pain in the back is getting in your nerves. So far lucky never used it that way.

I meant to ask about the telescopic canes, are they fairly robust and do they come in all sizes? I'd be looking for 1.45 metres.

Thanks for sharing your experience of this. It's good to hear someone balancing out the argument, especially as most of us criticising it have probably never tried it. (Well I haven't anyway)

How does the object detection work? Do you get haptics? Presumably this is on top of the normal sensations you get from the cane. Are the objects it is detecting above normal cane height?

I'm also a little unsure about why the cane needs a Smart Map. What does it give you that, say, Voice Vista plus the Meta glasses don't?

I'll also be really interested to hear your thoughts when you get your hands on the v2.

Hello Ollie,
They do come in many lengths. Usually five or six sections so they collpase down to around 12 inches (30 cm) when closed. These days I think the primary material is carbon fiber and I find this my preference.
As for sturdy, that is a nuanced question. Do they hold up over time? Yes especially the carbon fiber ones. Will it start to collapse during a long walk and need to be tightened? Also yes. For me the key is the task at hand. If I am off on a long walk, it is not the right choice. If I am going with others by car, in and out of places, and the car, it is the best choice because it is so much easier to stow. Have the right tool for the job. Tip: being small when closed they are also great backup devices in your backpack or luggage.

I got one a long time ago in a far galaxy far far away. Light but at that time it did not stay put. I was crossing the street and it collapse on me. Lucky I was close to reach side walk. Not know about now.

It was added because I believe it's what people wanted.

I don't mind soundscape but having a tool with maps built in is always nice.

It'll be interesting to check out WeWalks second version.

Thanks, that's very interesting.

So for the maps, are the benefits that the cane knows what direction you are facing, whereas something like Voice Vista can be a bit erratic if it is in your pocket and not held in front of you. And that the controls are on the cane so don't need you to fiddle with your phone or watch to do anything.

I'm still not convinced I would buy one, but I'd be curious to try out version 2, and will look out for your thoughts on it if you get hold of one. I think it's always good to know what the options are.

hello, Is the idea of the cane though, making people not use it properly as utilising the cane as it should be used, will detect obstacles for you, admittedly okay not at head and chest height, but even if you wanted say to get to a restaurant it wouldn't guide you, surely you'd still need to know the route and or follow someone who does, cross at the right places etcetera? as it has no camera the cane will not "see" what's ahead of you so you will still need good o and m skills to navigate, find dropped kerbs etcetera? Just my thoughts Will

Hi, I wonder if it works in other languages or at least it will work in other contries of the third world like Mexico, in my case, I mean the app features.
although I don't like the idea of walking and sounding everywhere like a crane in a wherehouse, I think I could give it a try.
regards.

I’ve been trying to pre-order the second generation cane for a week now, but when I try to pay via PayPal, I get the message "things don’t appear to be working at the moment. Please try again later". This is after filling out my details on the WeWalk site and then clicking "proceed to PayPal". It appears to be an issue somewhere between the WeWalk site and the PayPal API.

I’ve sent WeWalk a couple of emails about this and also reported the issue to them via Twitter, but no response so far and the issue still hasn’t been resolved. Has anyone else had this problem? It’s certainly an interesting way to run a business…

I had an issue with vergin media, that's a UK internet provider, when logging into their site on firefox, weirdly enough it works completely fine when using edge.

I don't know if that will fix it but I thought i'd throw it out there.

I’m with Virgin Media as well but had tried a couple of different browsers and operating systems. To be sure, I just went through the entire order process using my 5G connection, which is with EE, but still no joy.

I'm planning on going back to bt even though the speeds are slower; it doesn't go down as much.

I know you didn't need to know that but i couldn't think of what to put in the box :)

There was quite a long interview with these guys on Double Tap on YouTube. (I think the "best of you tube" podcast yesterday also had the full interview, but they also ran a shorter version on Friday on the podcast....

Anyway, a few things I didn't know:

The WeWalk just comes with a standard AmbuTech cane. So if your cane breaks you don't have to put the whole thing in the bin - I think you can just get a normal replacement and then you are good to go.

This gives it a big advantage of other solutions in my opinion and was a big turn-off for this kind of tech.

They said you can use the cane without any kind of subscription, but I think if you want some AI features then you have to pay a small amount to cover the costs.

Not sure but I think the AI will give you a sort-of Meta look and ask type function. So the cane has speakers in it but will also work with headphones connected with bluetooth to your phone. Which I presume would include the Meta Ray-bans. I think you maybe need to use the phone camera for this but I forget. Can anyone correct me if I'm talking crap here?

For some reason, they seem to have launched a competitor to AIRA. So you can talk to a trained human for assistance. I might be wrong but I think they said this was free if you had a WeAlk but you could pay a subscription if you do not.

The interview certainly made me curious.

I thought I’d post pricing here to save the difficulty of finding it out. So it’s going to be region specific but in the UK £599 discounted from £699. Release expected on October 31st 24. Free assistant until September 24 (not sure how that works) then £3.99/month or £39.99 per year. The Aira competitor isn’t free as far as I understand. In the interview, they stated they wanted to be lower cost than the competition or something similar. I really wasn’t keen on the approach to pricing which is to be cagey about it. Thats why I posted it here. Apologies We walk but I don’t think it should be hard to find out how much something costs. Other than that, it was a good interview and looks like they might have learned lessons. Only one left to learn is just be upfront. People can do their conversions but just want a rough idea.

Thanks for posting that. So the Assistant is both AI plus human? I think that is fair enough - I thought I must have got it wrong with the human assistance being free but wasn't sure. You can at least use the majority of the functions without subscribing.

I do wonder if they are maybe doing too much. I guess they want a subscription because that makes money going forwards and they have to justify it somehow. but I'm a little cynical about them taking on AIRA. Plus quite why I need an AI assistant on the cane I'm not sure. Am I right that I have to use my phone's camera for it? So I' having to get my phone out and listen to it on my meta ray-bans. I'm not sure what the cane is adding to this unless its AI assistant is somehow much better than the others.

Anyway I think sometimes all these features distract a little from the important bit - how much is this actually going to help with my mobility? And not sure you can get that answer from a podcast.

Yeh investors really really really want to see subscription models before they part with their hard uhm somewhere between worked and grifted cash. To be fair, the GPT sub seems reasonable except when you think everywhere you want inteligence is going to want a separate subscription. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to bring my own API key to all these services once I’ve subscribed to Open AI but I guess thats a fight for another day. It is at least quite low cost. As for the Aira competitor. They did have genuine justification which is that they’ll be able to access your location, cane sensors and route information. Maybe thats going to be useful but I’d be surprised if anyone is going to pay monthly for this as well as Aira when Aira is more flexible and has GPS if not the route in your We walk app. Thats easy enough to tell the agent. This might be one thats more for the investor stack than the user but that remains to be seen. They sound like genuine people trying to release a good product so hopefully that will show in the result.

Yes, I agree with that.

I think perhaps there needs to be a simpler way to hook up your own open AI account. I think for most people setting up API keys and transferring them to the WeWalk app would be too much.

I guess at some point maybe they will make it more of an oauth thing so you can just go into apps like these and say "the AI of my choice is x" and then you are prompted to login and it connects it up that way.

I suppose for better or for worse this would also allow your data to be shared across individual applications - so whether I a talking to the cane, the glasses, the pixies or my miniature horse they all know who I am and I get a joined up experience. Of course at the expense of losing all my civil liberties.

Something is going to have to change to make all this sort of thing affordable. So either it will have to be a joined up subscription or they will have to go the google route and send all our data to an evil genius living in his lab inside a volcano. our data off to everyone and anything.

At Sight Village I managed to get my hands on one and swung it about briefly to hear it beep when it detected an obstacle. I can't really say how it would work properly as I literally just stood on the spot and swung a bit. But it seemed quite simple. Think it might be better if it could indicate where objects are like the Biped which uses pitch to detect how high something is. I did notice that I could hear it quite well over the noise of Sight Village. But I didn't hear it trying to navigate me or anything like that which may be different.

One thing I did notice is that it doesn't ad much weight to the cane. They were using a graphite AmbuTech with a marshmallow tip. It was a fair bit longer than my aluminium AmbuTech with (very small and light) ceramic tip. I'd say the canes were similar weight - certainly the WeWalk was no heavier. Again would need to take it out and start swinging properly to know how it feels but it left me with no concerns there.

One thing that I really like about this is that you can just take the device off the cane and pop it on a new one. Seems a similar process to changing a hook on a cane.

I wish I'd got a bit more from my little session - quite tempted to try to book a proper demo sometime.

I think the thing I like about this one over the others is that it gives me more confidence that if my cane breaks I've not lost a huge investment. I just swap it onto a new one. Compared to Biped and Glide it does seem a bit basic though.

Knowing that the device can be swapped onto a different cane does make it seem like a more viable device. But having to pay $800 or more for what is essentially the same type of adaptive collision detection that comes on most modern Automobiles is kind of a letdown.

Maybe once this device has been out for a while, the price will go down some?

And finally, civil liberties are so last decade! 😝👎

In the UK at least there is currently a discount so it's £599 until October then £699.

The cane does have a navigation thing built in which I believe is turn by turn directions but that was another ball I dropped as I didn't really grill him about it. So not sure if it's Voice Vista but different or if it uses the sensors to work around the inaccuracies of gps.

There are also ChatGPT functions so I think you can ask it to describe what's around you or something. That's the only thing he said had a subscription. On the brochure it listed it as $4.99 (Yes this was a UK show but the amount was in dollars.

He didn't mention anything about the AIRA like service.

I do think it has a good form factor. I like it when tech is built into something I'd be using anyway like the Meta Ray-bans. I think the supplier over here (Sight and Sound) would likely be able to give me a demo in a couple of months so I might give that a go, if only because I'm curious. If so I will try to be better prepared.

This product was disappointing when I first encountered it three years ago. It looks to me that they have just startee throwing ideaa and features at it, desperatly trying to make it relevant in the new world we find ourselves in.

I am just not sure this is a thing. I wait to be proved wrong.

You might well be right.

I'm not particularly sold on the idea that my cane needs mapping built into it. I'm not sure I want it to shout everything out at everyone through its speaker. And I'm not sure I'd wear a bluetooth headset with it instead of my phone. However, if it could use its sensors to paint a more accurate picture then it could be interesting. I'm sure I don't need ChatGPT there as well as every other gadget in the world.

As far as helping with mobility goes, it's impossible to know without trying it for yourself in a real-world situation which is what I am curious to try.

Out of the options we've been talking about, WeWalk is the only one with the form factor I particularly like.

Biped is just too ridiculous. I don't think I'm a vain person, but, well, no, I'm not walking around with that on me unless I'm off to a RoboCop convention.

Glide is really intriguing. It almost seems too good to be true and it's the only one that feels incredibly futuristic to me. However I still have concerns about pushing an expensive toddle truck around town. If a cyclist appears from nowhere then I'm not going to be easily consolable. And no one will understand what it means, whereas most people understsand the white cane.

I know if it works as promised then maybe I don't need people to understand my cane so much but I still think it's helpful.

I would also say that the company behind Glide seem to be the ones most in tune with what blind people might actually want.

Well I have faith onthis project, once they solve so much issues stated here, but I like it over what I have read about Glide, is that a white cane could be still useful while going through stairs, which I think can't be done with Glide, cause you have to take it up and deal with its weight while trying not to fall on your steps with the stairs.
And as said before here, everyone knows what means your white movility cane (well not everyone in Mexico), but that would not happen with Glide which I think looks like you are vacuuming the floor.

Just listened to the RNIB Tech Talk podcast from a few days ago and there was a demo of this from Sight Village. It gave quite a good overview of the different features it has: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/rnib-tech-talk/id1151878596?i=1000662407323

I’m a little unconvinced about having a speaker blaring out from the cane. I thought I’d heard that you could use bluetooth headphones with this but I might be getting it confused with something else.

It does feel a bit like object detection is the only thing it gives you over and above what you could do on your phone. Whether a speaker and buttons on a cane is a better form factor for navigation I’ not sure. In a loud environment I doubt you would be able to hear it unless you can pair it with something else. Although when I tried it at Sight Village I could hear the object detection fairly clearly above the considerable noise inside.