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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EYE21 (EYE2021. Glasses to see with 3D sound, arrival to market.)

Teaser

Summary

In the world, there are 36 Million of blind people. If we compare with the 1500 millions of smart phones sold, it seems the technology should be accessible. Actual technology for vision combined with portable computing is able to deliver technology to blind users. Our intention is to arrive to as much blind people as possible.
Society has the responsibility of using the technology for helping people. We should improve quality of life and we should do from the point of view of the end-user, and not from the point of view of a developer. This is one of the big differences of EYE21 against any other devices.
Overall Objective of the project is to define how arrive with the product to the market and the challenge now is solved. Nevertheless, the technology we use is cognitive because it really transforms space into sound by a way that you understand, and respecting all the rest of your capabilities, because it uses spatialized sound and it does by a way, which do not overlap with your own echolocation capability

Work performed

A number of relevant institutions have been contacted. There is a general interest and potential support for the participation on trials and potential distribution of the product to market. An agreement of End-Users associations, Medial Experts, Research Experts and International US association has been done.
Presentation and understanding of the device without a prototype is a critical problem especially on this product. An effort has been done in developing a working prototype inside lab and other audio prototypes.
The support of the project has allow us to find the adequate partner to produce the hardware, to discard the risk of other competence coming from US and to define a procedure faster than the initial one for arriving to the end users and to the market.
One of the best successful action has been don is the agreement with the manufacturer. After analysing different possibilities and considering the possibilities of do it by our own manufacturing system, a decision for the selection of an external company has been taken. Several meeting with provider until the final agreement has been taken taking its market experience and capability of assuming other roles as it will be the distribution.

Final results

Our intention bringing EYE21 glasses is to be a world reference in technology for blind people. At the associated lab the experiments has demonstrated there is a real potentiality on the use of sounds to represent 3D space in all his shapes. We believe the glasses will be the bridge for increasing the research into 3D sounds. We believe in a future, to implement some innovation to the product to represent space particularities beyond shapes. This will only be accessible by the people who has increased his perception capability by using EYE21.
So, we consider EYE21 will be part of the life of most blind people in the future.
The economic impact of such technology could be estimated by considering the potential market, but this technology has not being yet considered in other areas, were maybe also could have a relevant impact.