Bishkek Schoolchildren Create "Smart" Glasses for the Blind

High school students from Bishkek have created "smart glasses" named EyeSens, designed to assist visually impaired and blind individuals. The device integrates a camera into the frame, capturing the surrounding environment and transmitting data to a smartphone. This information is then processed by local machine learning models and the Gemini AI.

A key feature is the AI voice assistant, AIris, which provides auditory cues through bone conduction speakers. This design allows users to remain aware of ambient sounds while keeping their hands free. Voice commands, initiated by saying "Hey, Iris," control the device.

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The voice assistant AIris provides auditory cues through bone conduction speakers. Thanks to this, the user's ears remain open to surrounding sounds, and their hands remain free.

The current prototype can identify objects, describe the environment, and read text in Russian and English. The team is also working on enabling offline object recognition. According to their research, a significant percentage of visually impaired residents in Kyrgyzstan face challenges like cars parked on sidewalks and low-hanging branches, issues EyeSens aims to address.

The developers plan to adapt EyeSens for Russian and Kyrgyz languages, projecting a cost 12 to 50 times lower than comparable international products. While the final price and mass production timeline remain unannounced, the prototype has been presented to a member of the Kyrgyz parliament. The project is credited to Bayaman Azhymyrzaev, Kanat Tynchtykbekov, Amanat Ermamatov, Sultanmurat Erkinbekov, with guidance from curator Botokoz Sooronbaeva.

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94.4 percent of surveyed visually impaired residents of Kyrgyzstan encounter cars parked on sidewalks, and 83.3 percent have sustained injuries from branches at face level.