Meet the OrCam MyEye[1], a tiny wearable device that can give you secret powers if you have vision problems. It’s a tiny device that you clip to your glasses. It has a camera, a speaker and a cable that hooks up to a bigger device that is roughly the size of a smartphone. After that, you can use the OrCam MyEye to read stuff for you. We visited OrCam’s office in Jerusalem to try out the device.
Using it is quite intuitive as you just need to point your finger at what you’re looking at and wait a couple of seconds. You can move your finger around or put the palm of your hand on the text to stop the device. It can read text in a newspaper, on a can of coke, on a business card or anywhere really. If you’re holding the text upside down, the device tells you to turn it.
If you’re looking at a $10 bill, it’s going to tell you that it’s $10 (and not $20 for instance). And if you’re trying to read a text in a foreign language, the OrCam MyEye is going to translate it without skipping a beat.
The second big feature is facial recognition. The device can help you figure out who’s in front of you. For instance, if you hear someone talking to you, you can just orient your face toward the person who’s speaking. The device will tell you the name of the person if you’ve previously recorded this face. And if it’s an unknown person, it’s going to give you hints (“a young woman is in front of you”).
You don’t need to pair the device with your phone as all the processing happens on the device...
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