I'm a CS and physics student at UIUC doing spatial AI research, and I'm trying to map where the current navigation and object detection tools fail in practice, since this group knows about far better than me!
My read of the current state is that the VLM-based tools (Be My AI, Seeing AI, the Be My Eyes Meta glasses integration) are strong at describing a scene but weak at the spatial part, things like how far, which direction, what's behind what, and that the tools offering real spatial precision usually depend on pre-scanned environments or a fixed object vocabulary, so they fall apart in unfamiliar or dynamic spaces. I want to know whether that framing holds up against your actual use.
Specifically, 1. when was the last time one of these tools let you down and what happened, 2. whether indoor or outdoor navigation is the harder problem for you, 3. whether holding a phone versus wearable glasses changes use something day to day.
Comments
Indoor navigation
I think there's a few apps that **can** do indoor navigation if you have a Pro model iPhone, like SeeingAI. I never tried it on my 12 Pro so I don't know if it's any good, I now have a regular 16. But I'd love something that can do indoor navigation, either something like Soundscape and Voice Vista, telling you what stores you're walking past, or have something come through Meta glasses or similar.
And yes, the Meta glasses aren't too wonderful at saying how far something is. For example, I can get as far as "Is there a bin nearby?" and it'll tell me that, but it's up to me to clonk around and find the bin.