Prescription glasses have been around for many years now, where they help correct one’s eyesight so that a person can see with perfect vision. However, there are limits to a pair of prescription glasses, as it is not a cure all. Researchers from Oxford University might have a new kind of smart glasses that could help those who suffer from severe sight loss, where these glasses will be able to enhance images of nearby people as well as objects on to the lenses, hence giving the wearer a far clearer image of that is going on around them. In fact, the change is so drastic, that this has enabled some folks to actually see their guide dogs for the first time in their lives.
According to the Royal National Institute of Blind People, this development could be “incredibly important” – you don’t say! It will definitely be able to offer a greater sense of independence for blind and partially sighted people so that they can go on with their lives with minimal assistance from the outside world.
The smart glasses is actually a specially adapted 3D camera, and since it is but a working prototype at the moment, wearing it outdoors would make you look like an alien, considering how the size is pretty large, and it needs to be hooked up to a laptop in a backpack via a cable. Hopefully with the advance of time and technology, all the little bits and pieces will be shrunk down to a far more manageable size. Scientists are targeting the availability of this smart glasses to cost somewhere in the region of a mobile phone, where they will first churn out an initial batch of 100 sets in 2014 before expanding the manufacturing process in the years to come.
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