New Thai-developed technology helping visually impaired

Together with a classmate, Nuntipat, who is continuing his studies for a master’s degree at the same university, later launched a tech startup, Visionear, to commercialise the gadget.
The co-founder of Visionear, which stands for “vision” and “ear”, said he was inspired by the difficulties faced by blind people on a daily basis when it came to discerning common objects such as a can of soft drink in a refrigerator or a banknote or clothing.
His solution is an electronic gadget equipped with tiny cameras and headphones that helps visually-impaired persons live a better life.
“We talked to a lot of blind people and found that they need some help in discerning objects around them. For example, blind persons need others to help them at home to get the right stuff in their fridge,” he said.
“Visionear allows them to live a more independent lifestyle. There are now about 300,000 blind and visually-impaired persons in Thailand. In fact, this gadget was our senior year’s project that we thought we could turn it into a commercial product.”
Visionear is a set of eye-glasses with a built-in frontal camera plus a connected headphone that informs the user by audio what objects they are seeing or holding.
When the user opens a fridge and there are several cans of soft drink, for example, they have no idea which one is Coke, Fanta, Pepsi or some other brand because they all feel the |same.
“Then the user holds one of the cans in front of the camera. There will be an audio identification of the drink via a recorded message based on each of the products’ barcode,” Nuntipat said.
 “This audio system is also connected to the database, which also allows users to pick the appropriate colour of clothing for the day. We have 12 basic colours. Or the system will let them know which banknotes they are using – a Bt20, a Bt50 or a Bt100.
“Users do not need a constant Internet connection since there is a built-in database that can be updated via an application.
“The initial price is only Bt4,000-Bt5,000 per set, compared to over Bt100,000 per set for an imported product. We also are looking for business partners to co-invest in this project.
“We also plan to raise funds from small and micro investors via the crowd-funding platform. We will promote this effort on our |Facebook fan page.”
He said that at present, the company was testing the gadget with members of the blind association and planned to launch it commercially this year.
“Imported products are very expensive, costing up to Bt200,000 per set, even though they have some other extra features which may be too complicated for visually-impaired persons,” he said.
“Next year, we also plan to promote this gadget as part of a corporate social responsibility programme in which businesses may purchase the gadget in large quantities for donation to the blind.”