Over 10 year ago, Engineer Mohammed Islam put his knowledge and expertise in the field of creating intelligent robots and his passion towards finding solutions to serve humanity; especially the physically challenged. And so, the UAE-based startup Amal Glass came to life.
Giving the gift of sight.
— World Economic Forum (@wef) April 7, 2019
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The concept in its early stages was an intelligent robot that is able to identify its surroundings and navigate safely with no accidents or collisions. After extensive research (at least 2.2 billion people suffer from vision impairment or blindness) and trials, Engineer Islam focused his energy into putting together a tool that would prove to be a necessity for some rather than a luxury.
Commenting on this, Mohammed Islam, Founder of Amal Glass said: “I remember trying to figure out the best way to help our society, and especially those who need support. The concept came to life after much thought, research and trials that proved the gap in self-support aids for the visually impaired, particularly in the Middle East. Today, I am proud to be part of the creation of Amal Glass that acts as a personal assistant that facilitates the lives of the visually impaired in their daily where-abouts.”
Amal Glass might look like regular light-weight sunglasses, but they come with 25 services that include obstacle warning, people recognition, weather notifications, colour recognition (for outfits’ picking), and much more. The pair has various sensors, AI-powered data processing unit, speakers, and a microphone that can be controlled by a touch-keypad located at the right temple. In addition, users are able to stay connected to the internet via Wi-Fi or an integrated chip to help them use GPS in navigating to and from location with no human-assistance. Furthermore, Amal Glasses are equipped with voice commands that can share the weather forecast, and recite surroundings such as moving cars, obstacles in spaces, etc.. The glasses can also recognise 16 languages including Arabic and English which enables the users to identify product labels, books, menus, and ATM screens to name a few.
More importantly, Amal Glass is powered by a SoS function that allows users to share their locations (both via maps and images) with others in addition to a help-me text message in cases where human help is needed. And for the visually-impaired gamers out there, the Amal Glass include a World War 3 game which uses a 3-D acoustic environment that allows users to enjoy the realm of advanced gaming, ensuring their integration in our heavily visual world.
