.lumen - Glasses for the Blind

There are over 40 million blind people in the world today, and the number is expected to reach 115 million by 2050. (Bourne et al, 2017).

Despite all technological advancements, when it comes to the mobility of the blind, the most used solution is still the guide dog. Unfortunately, due to multiple drawbacks, there are only 28 thousand guide dogs to 40 million blind individuals. Therefore, the Guide Dog is not a scalable solution.

Blindness affects the individual at all stages throughout one’s life:

• young children with early onset vision impairment can experience delayed motor, language, emotional, social and cognitive development, with lifelong consequences.
• school-age children with blindness experiences lower levels of educational achievement
• Adults with vision impairment often have lower rates of workforce participation and productivity and higher rates of depression and anxiety.
• In the case of older adults, blindness can contribute to social isolation, difficulty walking, a higher risk of falls and fractures, and a greater likelihood of early entry into nursing or care homes.

The socio-economic footprint to this problem is reflected globally via:

• increased direct health care systems costs
• increased public spending on complex modification to infrastructure and standardisation, in order to aid the mobility of blind
• increased public spending on social programmes for persons with disabilities
• increased economic burden on the families
• decreased full and productive employment and decent work.
• decreased social life, which includes social interaction, and sustainable growth for the blind and blind communities
• decreased inclusive and equitable quality education and promotion of lifelong learning opportunities

While technology advanced, and solutions appeared for multiple challenges the blind face, the area of mobility has not seen much change. In fact, the two most used solutions for the mobility of the blind, are the walking cane, and the guide dog, that are both thousands of years old. The current solutions, while useful, they present drawbacks: the walking cane only extends perception by a limited dimension. It offers more information to the blind and increases safety. However, it does nothing to help planning navigation and very little towards explaining the surrounding world. The guide dog, on the other hand, is able to plan, avoid obstacles and understand contextual situations. Unfortunately, its training cost between 40 to 60 thousand dollars, and the blind people cannot take care of them on their own, as they have the needs of every pet.

.lumen proposes the first scalable solution that mimics the main features of a guide dog, and then some, without the drawbacks that make the guide dog a non-scalable solution.  Specifically, using technologies from autonomous driving and robotics scaled down to a wearable system. 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 .lumen solution serves the 40 million blind individuals across the world. In 2020, around 55% of people living with blindness were women. From the 45% of men living with blindness, 75% were 50 years and over (Statista, 2021).

There are many facets to the daily struggles of blind individuals, but at the core of them is the lack of mobility that results in a lower quality of life.  For example, it is currently close to impossible for a blind person to go to a large convenience store, or to a hotel or a park, without human assistance or in some cases a guide dog.

Specifically, navigation in complex environments that are not accessible is currently not possible without aid. Furthermore, reading text is also a challenge that while it is solved by some solutions, it is not integrated into a singular product. Lastly, understanding the environment without touching it is something that is not yet possible for the blind, without assistance.

.lumen offers a solution that acts like a technological guide dog, helping its user navigate and avoid hazards. The user will be able to understand the environment, objects, movement in 3D, and navigate to desired places via haptic and audio feedback. Moreover, reading will no longer be a problem, as the user can understand text from books or from random/wild surfaces via spatialised sound. The .lumen device was built taking in consideration the ease of use by the end-user.

I was born in a family of limited possibilities, where both of my parents have locomotor disabilities, and my sister has mental disabilities. Growing up in an environment where I was the only person without a disability made me realise how important assistive technology is for people with disabilities and how very few things are being done.

Up till today .lumen solution was tested with over 200 blind individuals and the team expands driven by the social impact of the solution. For example, Dr. Marian Padure who leads the testing with the blinds, was born with cataract (legally blind), he graduated the school for the blind and after which he joined the university he had a surgery that it partially restored his vision. For Marian the problem was fixable but for other 40 million people is not. And this is only one of the 30 colleagues here at .lumen.

We have colleagues from various backgrounds such as engineers, scientist, industrial designers, psychologists, business developers and others to help this mission.

• First of all, the problem we selected to dedicate our life for is incredible hard, and we need the all the support in the world to help over 40 million people.

•  We want to better understand how our solution will benefit economies and societies and the total contribution to the domestic economy, local communities and employment. Thus, we seek subject-matter expertise and support in order to build a socio-economic impact measurement tool.

• We believe that the exposure in the media and at conferences offered by MIT Solve would be beneficial for .lumen. Furthermore, if selected, .lumen would be the first Romanian based solver team on the Solver Map.

•  Join a powerful network of impact-minded leaders across industries and sectors

• Access mentorship, coaching, and strategic advice from experts, as well as the Solve and MIT networks in order to better understand legal, cultural and market barriers outside European Union and thus facilitate market entry efforts (eg. partnerships with blind associations)

• Receive access to funding in grants and investments, including through prizes and Solve Innovation Future.

From a creational and technological perspective, at the core of .lumens’ innovativeness lays the technology that enables full mobility of a blind person. Currently, no other technological solution on the market can offer this, only guide dogs can partially reproduce it.

Functions such as navigating to new environments, identifying objects without touching them, understanding text from street signs, identifying the safe paths to walk on, are just few of the use cases that we at .lumen believe will empower blind and open up even more innovation.

By the use of the .lumen glasses the cost of potential productivity losses of blindness and MSVI (moderate and severe visual impairment) are expected to reduce significantly. It was estimated that the global annual cost of potential productivity losses of MSVI and blindness was of $410.7 billion or 0.3% of GDP (Ana et al., 2021, Global economic productivity losses from vision impairment and blindness).

.lumen has a strong belief that better mobility and accessibility will result in better education, better employment and better social life for the blind:

-        Education: Access to typical schools which in certain areas of the world are of a higher quality standard. UK based blind and partially sighted people with a degree have an employment rate of 44%, but this drops to 8% for those with no qualifications (RNIB, 2019)

-       Employment: Using .lumen technology, more jobs can be made accessible for the blind. With the unemployment rate for the USA based blind and visually impaired at over 44% (American Foundation for the Blind, 2018), there are so many barriers that can attribute to this number that can feel vast and overwhelming

-        Social Life: More activities and new activities will be possible for the blind by using .lumen tech.

Moreover, .lumen is directly targeting two SDGs (8,10) and indirectly covering another three (3,4,11).

From a scalability perspective, .lumen already plans 3 generations of devices. As technology advances, the possibility of making it scalable increases. The current plan states:

• V1 – high price, low volume, enabling mobility for up to 200k blind individuals
• V2 – mid price, mid volume, enabling mobility for up to 1 million blind individuals 
•  V3 – low price, high volume, enabling mobility for up to 5 million blind individuals

.lumen is directly targeting two SDGs (8,10) and indirectly covering another three (3,4,11):

• Goal 8, promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all is a direct target of the technology .lumen brings. As mobility is a key enabler for employment, .lumen is aiding target 8.5, reaching a full and productive employment and decent work for people with disabilities.
  • 8.5.1 - Average hourly earnings of female and male employees, by occupation, age and persons with disabilities
  • 8.5.2 - Unemployment rate, by sex, age and persons with disabilities

• Furthermore, Goal 10, reducing inequality within and among countries, is targeted, as its targets are empowered by higher mobility of people with visual disabilities.
  • 10.2.1 - Proportion of people living below 50 per cent of median income, by age, sex and persons with disabilities
  • 10.7.1 - Recruitment cost borne by employee as a proportion of yearly income earned in country of destination

• Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all is the main mantra of Goal 4.
  • 4.1.2 - Completion rate (primary education, lower secondary education, upper secondary education)
  • 4.3.1 - Participation rate of youth and adults in formal and non-formal education and training in the previous 12 months, by sex
  •  4.4.1 - Proportion of youth and adults with information and communications technology (ICT) skills, by type of skill
  •  4.5.1 - Parity indices (female/male, rural/urban, bottom/top wealth quintile and others such as disability status, indigenous peoples and conflict-affected, as data become available) for all education indicators on this list that can be disaggregated

• Goal 11, making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable is another goal indirectly tackled by .lumen.
  • 11.2.1 - Proportion of population that has convenient access to public transport, by sex, age and persons with disabilities
  • 11.7.1 - Average share of the built-up area of cities that is open space for public use for all, by sex, age and persons with disabilities
  • 11.7.2 - Proportion of persons victim of physical or sexual harassment, by sex, age, disability status and place of occurrence, in the previous 12 months

• Goal 3, ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
  • 3.4.2 - Suicide mortality rate
  • 3.5.2 - Harmful use of alcohol, defined according to the national context as alcohol per capita consumption (aged 15 years and older) within a calendar year in litres of pure alcohol
  • 3.6.1- Death rate due to road traffic injuries
  • 3.8.2 - Proportion of population with large household expenditures on health as a share of total household expenditure or income

Lumen provides an easy to use and affordable device that can understand the world like a vision capable individual and helps visually impaired navigate the world. This includes understanding the environment, objects and movement in 3D; Computing navigation paths to wanted objects or generally; Detecting hazardous situations; Guiding the blind using haptic impulses on the forehead and spatialized sound.

Our immediate outputs are to increase the mobility and accessibility of the environment, for the blind. These immediate outputs link to our long-term outcomes that includes improving education, employment, quality of life and sustainable growth for the blind and blind communities. To test some of these links, we've carried out multiple tests in Romania. Before testing .lumen devices, results show that 25% of the visually impaired would choose a technological equipment to move independently. After testing .lumen technology, 80% of blind testers  said they are considering technology as the solution for their mobility.

See how .lumen impacts the life of the blind from the attached video.

Video

.lumen uses technologies from autonomous driving and robotics scaled down to a wearable system. 

In detail, it uses advanced sensorics, mostly vision-based, combined with he 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. 

Video

.lumen is an equal employment opportunity employer. All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment and are not discriminated against on the basis of race, colour, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, disability, age, genetic information, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status or ancestry. This enables a strong foundation of diversity.

Currently, .lumen team is composed of people with educational background ranging from bachelor degree to Phd, professional experience ranging from 1 to 30 years, age ranging from 20 to 48, team members with disabilities, multiple nationalities and different religious statuses. Gender equity is fundamental to .lumens’ goal of advancing as a social tech startup. Therefore, it prioritises ensuring a gender equitable recruitment and selection processes and aims to reach cohorts of 25% female by 2022 and 50% female by 2026. .lumen understands that one of the easiest and important ways to increase the innovation level in a company is the gender balance of the team. Currently one of the main technical roles is led by a woman (Elena Pop, leading the Mechanical Engineering team), recently featured in Forbes Romania 30 under 30. .lumen will continue increasing gender balance by:

• leveraging local women STEM and entrepreneurship networks
• using diverse workforce images and gender inclusive language in the recruitment materials
• consistent and objective selection criteria

.lumen team members are equitably supported and comfortable in the company. We are continuously striding to maintain and build a culture where everybody belongs. That’s what sparks our innovation and our progress toward a more inclusive workforce and a better world.

The simplistic business model version

The channel in which the social entrepreneur and his team together with investors and partners converts inputs (technology, knowledge, R&D, money, time, passion) into outcomes (.lumen glasses) that then reach the market through sales/marketing/training partners (blind associations, technology dealerships), this generating both social value (measurable impact as described previously) and economic value (revenue).

Value proposition

Lumen is an easy to use and affordable device that can understand the world like a vision capable individual and helps visually impaired navigate the world. Lumen’s main advantages and uniqueness lies in

Smart mobility, - which

-           Understands the environment, objects and movement in 3D

-           Computes navigation paths to wanted objects or generally

-           Detects hazardous situations

-           Guides the blind using haptic impulses on the forehead and spatialized sound

Affordability – costs 10 times less than training a guide dog (most used solution)

Simplicity – one device instead of multiple solutions used in tandem, does not require the everyday care as in the case of a guide dog.

.lumen uses the financial sustainability plan of a fast-growing startup. Therefore, the plan is the following:

Pre-Revenue: .lumen has attracted and will continue to attract investments and grants that will be used to perform the R&D and Design for Manufacturing of the product, as well as the market entry. 

Post-Revenue: The moment the .lumen solutions will become commercial and revenue comes, investments and grants will continue to fund the expansion of the solution to reach as many individuals in need.

The business model assumes selling .lumen assistive technology using a partner network, made from blind associations and assistive technology dealerships worldwide. Over 500 such partners have been identified globally. .lumen is planning to sell the device for a $5,000 sum or as a subscription. However, .lumen doesn't want blind individuals to pay for our products. In most developed countries there are reimbursement and subsidising schemes that can offer .lumen technology for free or at a heavily subsidised price.  

.lumen has currently raised both investments and grants from multiple sources. For example, but not limited to:

- Raised over $4 million from angels and venture capital

- Been the first Romanian company to be awarded by the European Innovation Council, a blended finance (grant and investment) totalling over $10 million

- Won other grants or in-kind support from companies such Dassault Systems, Microsoft, Nvidia, AWS, and others, worth over $2 million.