These augmented-reality glasses are helping the blind see again
Hicks's startup, OxSight, is building augmented-reality glasses that render the physical world visible, even to the visually impaired.
The sense we experience as vision is the outcome of a constant jigsaw-assembling process in our brain: the eyes only need to pick up specific visual tidbits (colour, contrast, dimensions), and the occipital and parietal lobes will make sense of the overall picture. Having observed this through his research, Hicks teamed up with fellow Oxford computer-vision scientist Philip Torr to create OxSight, a spinout that launched in March 2016. The pair designed augmented-reality glasses that let partially sighted people make sense of their surroundings by spotlighting specific visual cues and overlaying them on the lenses in real time.
Using computer-vision algorithms and cameras, OxSight's glasses can increase image contrast, highlight specific visual features or create cartoonish representations of reality, depending on the eye condition they're being used to compensate for. "For instance, if you have tunnel vision and issues with colour perception, they'd emphasise colours," explains Hicks, 43. "If you have got glaucoma and your vision is blurry, the glasses will enhance the salience of certain objects."
Pilot users, who are suffering from diseases such as glaucoma, retinitis pigmentosa or diabetes, report that, due to the glasses, they can avoid obstacles, see blurry faces clearly again and read from slides.
See the full story here: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/oxsight-augmented-reality-glasses-eyesight-vision-blindness