- Title: Helping the blind with free smart glasses
- Date: 13th May 2016
- Summary: WARSAW, POLAND (MAY 10, 2016) (REUTERS) PARSEE GLASSES PROTOTYPE (SOUNDBITE) (English) PARSEE PROJECT MANAGER, BARTOSZ TRZCINSKI, SAYING: "This is our prototype and this is a model that we want to have, with miniaturized electronics and very small battery." VARIOUS PARSEE GLASSES PARSEE GLASSES FUNCTIONS SEEN ON LAPTOP SCREEN (SOUNDBITE) (English) PARSEE CROWD-FUNDING MANAGER, BARBARA LAPA, SAYING: "Parsee wants to give those glasses for free because our main goal is to help people, and by inventing Parsee we would like to make small step for a bigger change in disabled people's life." PARSEE GLASSES
- Embargoed: 28th May 2016 12:51
- Keywords: smart glasses blind glasses Parsee Parsee.org 3D glasses
- Location: WARSAW, POLAND
- City: WARSAW, POLAND
- Country: Poland
- Topics: Science
- Reuters ID: LVA0064HN56PL
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: A Polish non-profit organisation is hoping to help the blind and visually impaired by looking to make and give away what it says will be the world's first free smart glasses.
Parsee has developed a prototype of battery-powered glasses with a 3D printed frame, internet protocol camera and earphone.
Pushing a photo button on the frame, users take pictures of an object in front of them, which the camera sends to a mobile phone app via its hot spot. The app identifies shapes, colours, text as well as faces and sends the detail via audio to the earphone.
"It helps (the blind and visually impaired) in their everyday living like reading newspapers, drinking juice," Parsee project manager Bartosz Trzcinski said.
Parsee, which began as a family project to help a relative, has begun fund-raising with a $25,000 goal to complete research and development of a sleeker model of the glasses. It is still in the early stages of its longer-term mass production and eventual free distribution goal. The current cost of producing one pair of glasses is $300 -- a figure Parsee aims to reduce once it has funds, demand and production in place.
Similar high-tech projects have been in the works elsewhere. Britain's Royal National Institute of Blind People has been working with researchers on making smart glasses, retailing at less than 300 pounds ($433), that help wearers identify shapes and determine distance, its website says. ($1 = 0.6917 pounds) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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