Samsung is working on glasses that help the visually impaired

Samsung is working on a new pair of glasses that aim to help the visually impaired.

A project at the company called Relúmĭno had previously revealed an app that uses a phone in a headset - similar to the Samsung Gear VR - to help those with visual difficulties see better.

The company has now revealed it wants to make the tech even more accessible by including it in a pair of glasses that are a similar size to your average pair of sunglasses.

Clearing things up

The Relúmĭno app would usually use the processing power and battery of your phone to work, but it's thought Samsung will one day be able to shrink this down to a pair of shades and make it something you can wear on a daily basis.

Although this is currently just a concept technology, it has modes for different visual difficulties.

The mode the company calls 'regular' makes the outlines of images clearer to attempt to make the users vision less blurry. For reading there's a mode called Color Invert that makes it easier to read the written word by putting the text on a high contrast background.

There are also modes for those who suffer from Central Vision loss and Tunnel Vision.

Helping the visually impaired is a big project for a lot of tech companies right now as we've seen Microsoft hard at work on its Seeing AI app that helps describe what the phone can see.

Whether we'll ever see these glasses make their way to market is a different question. 

This is part of Samsung's new concept tech it will show off at CES 2018 including a new respiratory medical device called GoBreath as well as a speaker that uses super directional sound to limit its volume.

TOPICS
James Peckham

James is the Editor-in-Chief at Android Police. Previously, he was Senior Phones Editor for TechRadar, and he has covered smartphones and the mobile space for the best part of a decade bringing you news on all the big announcements from top manufacturers making mobile phones and other portable gadgets. James is often testing out and reviewing the latest and greatest mobile phones, smartwatches, tablets, virtual reality headsets, fitness trackers and more. He once fell over.