.lumen builds glasses that empower the blind to live a better life.
There are 40 million blind people today, and despite all the technological advancements, the most used mobility solutions are still the walking cane and the guide dog.
.lumen offers a solution that mimics the benefits of a guide dog without the drawbacks that make it a non-scalable solution.
National
Romania
Municipality of Cluj-Napoca
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
Horizon2020 / Horizon Europe
EIC Accelerator 2021
No
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): .lumen Type of organisation: For-profit company First name of representative: Cornel Last name of representative: Amariei Age: 29 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Gender: Male Nationality: Romania Function: CEO Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Iasilor street no. 24 Town: Cluj-Napoca Postal code: 400146 Country: Romania Direct Tel:+40 756 039 520 E-mail:cornel@dotlumen.com Website:https://www.dotlumen.com
.lumen builds glasses that empower the blind to live a better life.
There are over 40 million blind people today, and the number is expected to surpass 100 million by 2050. While technology advanced, the only mobility solutions for the blind are still thousands of years old: the guide dog and the white cane. The guide dog is unanimously seen as a great solution, but it has several drawbacks. To train a guide dog can cost up to 60 thousand dollars, and to take care of one is too much responsibility for a blind individual . As a result, there are less than 30.000 guide dogs to the over 40 million blind people.
.lumen proposes the first scalable solution that mimics the main features of a guide dog without the drawbacks that make the guide dog a non-scalable option. Specifically, using technologies from autonomous driving and robotics scaled down to a wearable system in the form of a headset. The system works like a guide dog, with the main difference in the feedback mechanism – the guide dog pulls the owner’s hand while the .lumen glasses “pull” the head, using a .lumen patented haptic and auditory feedback mechanism, validated with over 200 blind individuals.
The company started 2020 and today it gathers over 40 engineers, professors, disability experts, designers and scientists. The concept is recognised globally for achievements such as The Red Dot: Luminary Award – the highest level of recognition for Industrial Design, and as the first Romanian start-up to win EIC Accelerator funding, part of Horizon Europe.
glasses for the blind
scalability
accessibility
mobility
disability
.lumen is directly targeting two SDGs (8,10) and indirectly covering another three (3,4,11):
• Promotes inclusive and sustainable economic growth by helping the blind people reach a full and productive employment and decent work. As mobility is a key enabler for employment, .lumen helps people with disabilities be more autonomous and have access to more employment opportunities.
• Reduces inequality within and among countries. As people with visual disabilities are empowered by higher mobility, .lumen supports the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of disability.
• Ensures inclusive and equitable quality education and promotes lifelong learning opportunities. Increasing mobility and increasing their ability to understand the environment and to receive contextual information from it increases their independence and could help them go to public schools and colleges.
• Makes cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. .lumen glasses will help the visually impaired people better understand the environment and its spatiality which will further result in safer guidance for the blind individuals. The glasses are capable of guiding blind individuals through complex indoor and outdoor situation, in order to reach an object of interest (or location of interest). Additionally the .lumen solution comes with safety features such as “Collision Avoidance” that will alert the user if an emergency stop is necessary. Moreover, costs allocated from the local/national budget for accessibility of cities will decrease as the blind will be able to understand the environment around them using only the glasses. The blind people will be able to travel, understand the surroundings and increase his or her independence/mobility.
• Empowers mobility, which .lumen brings with the breakthrough technology. Functions such as navigating to new environments, identifying objects without touching them, understanding text
“I’ve expected something like this to be possible, but not during our lifetime” - A vice-president of the Romanian Blind Association, blind since birth. This is the kind of feedback the blind individuals which test the .lumen device give.
The .lumen concept comes as a comfortable and easy to use headset designed to be used by a blind person. The only required care involved for the device is the casual electric charging and cleaning. Among the features appreciated by the testers we can find:
• using of 1 hand only for the on/off/voice recognition button, thus enabling constant use of 2 hands in everyday chores
• the optimal fit of a human head, thus ensuring its comfortable to wear
• does not cover the ears, thus not impacting
With the help of the haptic & auditory feedback and voice commands simple as Show Me/Take Me/Read Me a blind person can live an independent life, can connect with peers, engage in the community, pursue education, enhance employment, and live a fuller life.
Furthermore, the .lumen concept was also validated by one of the most prestigious design awards, the Red Dot: Luminary award. This award is the highest level of recognition accorded at the Red Dot Award: Design Concept, and serve as inspiration and role model for all designers. In this competition the .lumen concept competed with Richard Bronson’s Virgin Galactic, among others, and .lumen won.
At .lumen we believe that is not the blind who has to pay for this technology. All over the world there are assistive technology reimbursement or subsidies programs. For this we have run a study on all the available reimbursement schemes worldwide for the procurement of the .lumen device. We have already identified 245 programmes that can fully or partially reimburse the cost of the device. For example in Romania, people with disabilities can access a voucher of 5.000 EUR for buying assistive technology through the Inclusion and Social Dignity Program (2022-2027).
Furthermore, .lumen is continuously scouting ways of making the technology available to as many visually impaired as possible. As the Go 2 Market strategy envisions the possibility to test the system at blind associations or similar organisations, .lumen has performed the largest study of blind supporting organisations, which identified more than 1.500 such providers in 60 countries, already.
The .lumen concept is a result of testing with over 200 blind individuals and a commitment to continuous research and development to empower them. The benefits of citizens affected by concept can’t be described in enough words. A 2-minute video is provided to show the impact .lumen brings in the life of the blind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRSkCRd4aRw
From Universities such as Technical University of Cluj, NGO’s such as the Romanian Association for the Blind, local public authorities such as Municipality of Cluj-Napoca up to European level stakeholders such as the European Innovation Council; multiple stakeholders participated in the design and development of the .lumen concept at various levels and in various doses.
Latest stakeholder to add a great value to .lumen is the European Innovation Council Accelerator, where besides the financial stimuli to bring the concept closer to the blind, it provides business acceleration services that are foster the uptake of the concept in Europe and around the world.
.lumen uses technologies from autonomous driving, artificial intelligence and robotics scaled down to a wearable system.
In detail, it uses advanced sensorics, mostly vision-based, combined with the latest in Machine Learning, to understand the surrounding world, its objects, their trajectories, where it is safe to walk and where not. Afterwards, it uses internal processing to compute paths of interest for blind individuals that are safe and constantly responding to the environment. Lastly, it offers the relevant information through .lumen's patented auditory and haptic feedback mechanisms.
At the same time, several other features are available such as the Voice-base Human Machine Interface that leverages Speech Recognition and Conversational AI; OCR capabilities to understand "wild" text and several other features which increase the usability for the blind.
.lumen is a Software startup with a Hardware component. The hardware is the deployment platform that is designed to be future proof. The software is constantly updated over the air, constantly increasing the helpful features it offers.
The mainstream actions or the competitors in the field of concept some are thousands of years old, such as the white cane and guide dog. But rather discussing about the mainstream actions, a better approach is to see how the problems of the blind are approached:
- Reading is a challenge, other devices solve it, .lumen solves it as well, it is not a differentiator
- To understand the objects around, that’s something which some solutions can do, but it’s not intuitive. dotLumen created a much more intuitive way
- When we speak about guidance, the White Cane will tell the blind there is an obstacle but can’t tell how to go around it. The Guide Dog knows how to do that marvelously but it’s not scalable. It’s the first time, in human history, when a technological system can guide a blind person, just as a guide dog.
- Even the guide dog can’t take the blind to places it never been before. For that, a blind person usually uses a navigation app such as Google Maps, with headphones and a guide dog. At .lumen this is possible and it’s the first time when technology can do this, in a single system.
The innovation furthermore can be represented on multiple dimensions:
- The first solution designed to and capable of computing paths on the actual environment and guide blind individuals on them
- First system capable of giving auditory and haptic feedback for navigation that is precise enough to guide humans safely through tight situations such as an open door, pedestrian sidewalk, crowded indoor or outdoor scenarios
- First technological alternative to the guide dog, capable of mapping and contextually understand the world to safely guide a human through it
.lumen uses proprietary technology for 3D mapping, obstacle and image detection and for feedback. While it was all developed for blind assisting purposes, it can be reused for other applications such as factory automation, indoor and outdoor localization and mapping or entertainment feedback. They can all be considered as future business models for the core technology. According to the core beliefs of .lumen, the technology will be reused in areas such as emergency interventions, aiding other disabilities, and in general for aiding people.
While the concept was developed at local level, it is addressing the blind around the whole world. Moreover, blind individuals are not the only ones addressed, so are the moderately or sever visually impaired. Our concept helps people who have little or no vision, such that their mobility is affected. This also adds the 295 million people which have moderate and severe vision impairment, as a target market.
The .lumen concept is imagined and built together with blind individuals so to it is sustainable and inclusive and is beautiful for the mind and soul of the blind while it does not interfere with the places in ways that is not beautiful for the eyes of others. In line with European Bauhaus values the .lumen concept appraise:
- Enriched experience and appreciation of environment for the blind persons by enabling smart mobility
- Urban infrastructure sustainability and harmony with the environment by decreasing public spending on complex modification to infrastructure and standardization targeted to aid the mobility of the blind.
- Inclusive, encouraging a dialogue across cultures, disciplines, genders, and age without the barriers imposed by the lack of sight.
