[NFBMT] OrCam: From the New York Times

Sun Mar 5 20:52:32 UTC 2017

Oh that is to bad would love to have something for the total.
I would love to give it a try. 
No one has ever talked about any more on behalf of the I thought it was called the umbrella cane, where you couldn't get it wet or it wouldn't work. It came from Canada. 

Dar 
Every Saint has a past, 
Every sinner has a future, Sent from my iPad

On Mar 5, 2017, at 11:20 AM, Bruce&Joy Breslauer via NFBMT <nfbmt at nfbnet.org> wrote:

>> From what I read, this is being developed to help those who can see well
> enough to point to an object or to the first line of a page in order for the
> device to start reading or to recognize the person or object.  So it would
> seem by inference that this may not work well for someone who doesn't see at
> all.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: NFBMT [mailto:nfbmt-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Dar via NFBMT
> Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2017 10:46 AM
> To: NFB of Montana Discussion List
> Cc: Dar
> Subject: Re: [NFBMT] OrCam: From the New York Times
> 
> Now do I read this will help a total!
> I would want to make sure I still would use my skills.
> Or would you not trust the dog!
> Or correct when dog wishes to get into trouble.
> I love it when price is given we should jump and get it rite away!
> 
> Dar
> Every saint has a past,
> Every sinner has a future
> 
> 
>> On Mar 5, 2017, at 5:40 AM, Bruce&Joy Breslauer via NFBMT
> <nfbmt at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>> 
>> Israeli Start-Up Gives Visually Impaired a Way to Read - The New York Times
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> By
>> 
>> JOHN MARKOFF
>> 
>> JUNE 3, 2013
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> JERUSALEM - Liat Negrin, an Israeli who has been visually impaired since
>> childhood, walked into a grocery store here recently, picked up a can of
>> vegetables
>> 
>> and easily read its label using a simple and unobtrusive camera attached to
>> her glasses.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Ms. Negrin, who has coloboma, a birth defect that perforates a structure of
>> the eye and afflicts about 1 in 10,000 people, is an employee at OrCam, an
>> 
>> Israeli start-up that has developed a camera-based system intended to give
>> the visually impaired the ability to both "read" easily and move freely.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Until now reading aids for the visually impaired and the blind have been
>> cumbersome devices that recognize text in restricted environments, or, more
>> recently,
>> 
>> have been software applications on smartphones that have limited
>> capabilities.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> In contrast, the OrCam device is a small camera worn in the style of Google
>> Glass, connected by a thin cable to a portable computer designed to fit in
>> 
>> the wearer's pocket. The system clips on to the wearer's glasses with a
> small
>> magnet and uses a bone-conduction speaker to offer clear speech as it reads
>> 
>> aloud the words or object pointed to by the user.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The system is designed to both recognize and speak "text in the wild," a
> term
>> used to describe newspaper articles as well as bus numbers, and objects as
>> 
>> diverse as landmarks, traffic lights and the faces of friends.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> It currently recognizes English-language text and beginning this week will
> be
>> sold through the company's Web site for $2,500, about the cost of a
> midrange
>> hearing aid. It is the only product, so far, of the privately held company,
>> which is part of the high-tech boom in Israel.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The device is quite different from other technology that has been developed
>> to give some vision to people who are blind, like the artificial retina
>> system called Argus II, made by Second Sight Medical Products. That system,
>> which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in February, allows
>> visual signals to bypass a damaged retina and be transmitted to the brain.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The OrCam device is also drastically different from Google Glass, which
> also
>> offers the wearer a camera but is designed for people with normal vision
> and
>> 
>> has limited visual recognition and local computing power.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> OrCam was founded several years ago by Amnon Shashua, a well-known
> researcher
>> who is a computer science professor at Hebrew University here. It is based
> on
>> computer vision algorithms that he has pioneered with another faculty
> member,
>> 
>> 
>> Shai Shalev-Shwartz, and one of his former graduate students, Yonatan
> Wexler.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> "What is remarkable is that the device learns from the user to recognize a
>> new product," said Tomaso Poggio, a computer scientist at M.I.T. who is a
>> computer vision expert and with whom Dr. Shashua studied as a graduate
>> student. "This is more complex than it appears, and, as an expert, I find
> it
>> really impressive."
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The advance is the result of both rapidly improving computing processing
>> power that can now be carried comfortably in a wearer's pocket and the
>> computer
>> 
>> vision algorithm developed by the scientists.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On a broader technology level, the OrCam system is representative of a wide
>> range of rapid improvements being made in the field of artificial
>> intelligence,
>> 
>> in particular with vision systems for manufacturing as well as fields like
>> autonomous motor vehicles. (Dr. Shashua previously founded Mobileye, a
>> corporation
>> 
>> that supplies camera technology to the automobile industry that can
> recognize
>> objects like pedestrians and bicyclists and can keep a car in a lane on a
>> freeway.)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Speech recognition is now routinely used by tens of millions of people on
>> both iPhones and Android smartphones. Moreover, natural language processing
>> is
>> 
>> making it possible for computer systems to "read" documents, which is
> having
>> a significant impact in the legal field, among others.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> There are now at least six competing approaches in the field of computer
>> vision. For example, researchers at Google and elsewhere have begun using
>> what
>> 
>> are known as "deep learning" techniques that attempt to mimic biological
>> vision systems. However, they require vast computing resources for accurate
>> recognition.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> In contrast, the OrCam technique, which was described in a technical paper
> in
>> 2011 by the Hebrew University researchers, offers a reasonable trade-off
>> between recognition accuracy and speed. The technique, known as Shareboost,
>> is distinguished by the fact that as the number of objects it needs to
>> recognize grows, the system minimizes the amount of additional computer
> power
>> required.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> "The challenges are huge," said Dr. Wexler, a co-author of the paper and
> vice
>> president of research and development at OrCam. "People who have low vision
>> 
>> will continue to have low vision, but we want to harness computer science
> to
>> help them."
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Additionally the OrCam system is designed to have a minimal control system,
>> or user interface. To recognize an object or text, the wearer simply points
>> 
>> at it with his or her finger, and the device then interprets the scene.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The system recognizes a pre-stored set of objects and allows the user to
> add
>> to its library - for example, text on a label or billboard, or a stop light
>> 
>> or street sign - by simply waving his or her hand, or the object, in the
>> camera's field of view.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> One of the key challenges, Dr. Shashua said, was allowing quick optical
>> character recognition in a variety of lighting conditions as well as on
>> flexible
>> 
>> surfaces.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> "The professional optical character readers today will work very well when
>> the image is good, but we have additional challenges - we must read text on
>> 
>> flexible surfaces like a hand-held newspaper," he said.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Although the system is usable by the blind, OrCam is initially planning to
>> sell the device to people in the United States who are visually impaired,
>> which
>> 
>> means that their vision cannot be adequately corrected with glasses.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> In the United States, 21.2 million people over the age of 18 have some kind
>> of visual impairment, including age-related conditions, diseases and birth
>> 
>> defects, according to the 2011 National Health Survey by the U.S. National
>> Center for Health Statistics. OrCam said that worldwide there were 342
>> million
>> 
>> adults with significant visual impairment, and that 52 million of them had
>> middle-class incomes.
>> 
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