Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - I-SEE (Intelligent Sensor Enabled Eyewear)

Teaser

The aim of the I-SEE project is to develop and launch in the market a new eyewear product line and a platform of services focused on improving the health care and wellbeing of eyeglasses wearers, by monitoring the viewing and living experience of the consumers and allowing...

Summary

The aim of the I-SEE project is to develop and launch in the market a new eyewear product line and a platform of services focused on improving the health care and wellbeing of eyeglasses wearers, by monitoring the viewing and living experience of the consumers and allowing eyeglasses to interact with smartphones, in-car telematics and professional devices of practitioners and opticians. The I-See products will be equipped with state-of-the-art electronics components and sensors, to collect and transmit information to consumers’ mobile apps as well as to professional solutions of eyecare specialists. The I-See project will leverage the market access and the vertical integration on the value chain of Luxottica, project coordinator and undisputed leader in the eyewear sector, to promote the I-See product line on the B2C consumer market, as well as the distinctive capabilities of the consortium partners in the electronics (SIGMA), SW (ALTEN), professional service (EY) and scientific (Fondazione Centro San Raffaele) fields, who will strengthen their B2B offer and positioning in the manufacturing industries impacted by the wearable trend. The project ambition is to launch the I-See product line in two year time on the global market, disclosing ultimate medical and social benefits to eyeglass wearers, becoming a model on how the European manufacturing and luxury industry can take advantage of the advent of the contamination of design products with technology components, avoiding to be disintermediated by the global digital American and Asiatic giants in the development of the new value added services and relationship with customers. The project will also have an important impact on the core business of the consortium participants, creating new job and economic opportunities in European Union.

Work performed

To reach this target within the four “technical” (WP1, WP2, WP3, WP4), one of marketing (WP5) and one ethical (WP7) work packages, the work started with the asset developed for Iteration 1. The six use cases, identified during the first reporting period through a user centered design approach, were further developed according to technology findings and tested with users. New functions, like thermo and hygrometric comfort algorithms, were proposed based on interest, while the progressive lens use case were stopped due to the combination of technical limitation and low business interested.
The product requirements for the Iteration 2 and 3 were updated in terms of functional and technical requirements, and criteria of quality acceptance.
Based on the results of the requirements, use-cases and finding coming from the Iteration 1 the project has been able to develop:
1. Each I-SEE product components (frame, HW and SW). During this second reporting period indeed the project realized:
• technical and design details of the eyeglass frame developed for Iteration 2 and 3;
• the complete electronics design included the Iteration 2 and 3 hardware development (e.g. HW, Mechanics and low level FW);
• the app and SW (Android & iOS) code;
• the set-up of big data platform and make it compliant to GDPR;
• the development of algorithms capable to extract additional and structured information from the data gathered by the sensors embedded in the I-SEE glasses.
2. Product prototypes for Iteration 2 and 3 in which all the components have been integrated.

As the final step of this reporting period, the testing protocol was applied according to the ethical frames and then the user test of the platform, App and glasses were performed.
In parallel the project aligned the technical work packages and outcome with market orientation (WP5), identifying the project strategies for I-SEE product market, distribution and communication. The I-SEE was resulted as real product platform enabling the development of sun- and prescription- eyewear for both B2C and B2B markets.

A new I-SEE application was implemented according to product requirements and its the user interface is completely different from the Data Science App developed with the Iteration 1 glasses, since this is targeting end-user and not scientists/developers.
The end-user App was designed in order to have similar, but not ‘exact’ due to technical limitation, experience in Android and iOS.

The total number of use cases are 9 as the number of icon in the App dashboard. Figure 3 shows an example for the skin UV monitoring use case for different environmental stimuli and user profile. This menu shows all the different top views of the application and is used to navigate the application. In the top it shows the status of the connection to the device.

The overview of the Android application architecture was developed (see D2.8 and a D2.9 (Mobile) Platform Test Bed 2 and 3), maintaining modularity and OO principles in mind but differentiated based the Operating System.

Within WP5, the marketing activity included the exploration of both B2C and B2B market. For the former, a new brand (i.e. Alite) and crowdfunding campaign were prepared based on a prescription-wearer user. For the latter, after having explore the opportunity with Opticians, we pivoted the focus through Scientists and Developers since the increase interest in such new tool for enabling new research studies and integration within smart environment. Therefore, the original envisages Web Platform of Opticians (WPO) was converted in a portal through which researches and developers can manage the data acquired and stream in the cloud.
From one hand the launch of the B2C crowdfunding campaign was placed in hold due to the change on the market landscape after the merging between Luxottica and Essilor (see D5.1 for more detail), on the other hand the Luxottica has already been proposing the product (eyewear, App

Final results

The project impacted on both the technology and the methodology currently adopted on wearable technology.
The need of finding solutions that can fit in the fashion industry has been a driving force for the ecosystem of supplier and developer company involved indirectly within the project.
Some exploitable results are the components and electro-mechanical solutions (battery, light sensor and capacitive sensor) that were developed to minimize the impact of the electronic in the temple form factor.
In addition, by placing all the sensor in the temple has enable the development of algorithms dedicated to eye and head monitoring that aren’t possible before due to the absence of such kind of not-obtrusive wearable device that can be easily worn during daily life .

Website & more info

More info: https://isee-project.eu/.