[blindza] Re: article: Wicab's wearable vision device nears U.S. market, thanks to Google
- From: William Brandes <williambrandes@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: blindza@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2015 18:08:50 -0500
um. pretty high $ for my blood. will buy alot of donuts /smile ... william
On 2/9/15, Jacob Kruger <jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> Wicab's wearable vision device nears U.S. market, thanks to Google.
>
> By Jeff Engel, February 9th, 2015.
>
> Paul Bach-y-Rita believed technology could help blind people to, in a way,
> “see”
> the world around them by substituting touch for sight. After 17 years and
> nearly
> $26 million in total funding, the late scientist’s company, Wicab, is
> closer
> than ever to turning his idea into reality.
>
> Wicab has gotten some international attention in the past decade for its
> “BrainPort” device that converts video signals to electronic pulses that
> are
> felt on the tongue. But what isn’t widely known is that the company had been
>
> on
> the brink of failure—and that it took refocusing on the vision problem,
> plus
> some help from the U.S. military and tech giant Google, to right the ship.
>
> The Middleton, WI, company is now seeking regulatory approval in the U.S.
> In
> pilot tests, Wicab’s device has helped blind people navigate sidewalks
> without a
> guide dog or cane, aided a blind rock climber to more confidently pursue
> his
> passion, and helped blind children in China learn to recognize Mandarin
> characters and play games of darts.
>
> The technology is based on decades of research by Bach-y-Rita, who pioneered
>
> the
> field of “neuroplasticity,” the idea that the brain can reorganize itself
> and
> that senses can substitute for one another—in this case, the tongue’s dense
> group of receptors delivering information to the brain that would normally
> arrive via the optic nerve. Bach-y-Rita and his team showed that the brain
> can
> be trained to interpret this sensory data and, although it wouldn’t
> perfectly
> replicate vision, it could help the blind to better perceive their
> surroundings.
>
> “Paul famously said we see with our brains and not with our eyes,” Wicab
> CEO
> Robert Beckman says. “The eyes are sensors. If the sensor is damaged or not
> working, you can provide an alternate sensor … to provide the information to
>
> the
> person’s brain.”
>
> The BrainPort device mounts a small video camera to sunglasses that are
> connected via an electrical cord to a square-shaped, lollipop-like
> mouthpiece
> with a grid of 400 electrodes. The video feed is translated into digital
> signals
> expressed by the electrodes as light electronic pulses on the tongue. The
> tongue
> is an ideal choice for the contact point partly because it’s chock full of
> nerve
> endings. White pixels from the camera are translated into strong pulses,
> gray
> pixels feel slightly weaker, and black pixels result in no stimulation; the
> device can also reverse that so that darker images trigger the stimulation
> and
> lighter ones do not. The sensation, which feels similar to “Pop Rocks”
> candy, is
> meant to evoke in the mind a picture “painted on the tongue with tiny
> bubbles,”
> the company says—a much more sophisticated version of the children’s game
> where
> one interprets words traced by fingers on their back.
>
> Bach-y-Rita, a former University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher, died in
> 2006
> from lung cancer. But his company continued his work, and is now closer to
> commercializing the BrainPort device in the U.S., after getting approval to
>
> sell
> the product in Europe and Canada in 2013. Wicab is getting ready to publish
> positive results from a small clinical trial testing the technology, and it
> awaits U.S. Food & Drug Administration clearance to sell the medical device
> here, Beckman says.
>
> Wicab’s story is an example of the twists and turns a medical startup can
> take
> as it tries to make the sometimes-perilous leap from the research lab to a
> successful business. A decade ago, the company had a different focus.
> Between
> 2005 and 2006, it had convinced investors to pump more than $10.5 million
> into
> commercializing its experimental technology primarily for the purposes of
> helping people with balance problems. At the time, the company combined the
> electrode-equipped mouthpiece with an accelerometer, which can tell when
> something tilts. The device would emit soft pulses of electric current that
> formed a pattern on the person’s tongue. If the person stayed upright, the
> pattern would remain in the middle of the tongue, but it would shift if the
> person started to tip over. The technology was thought to help people with
> chronic balance issues, perhaps through damaged inner ears or a stroke, to
> train
> themselves to maintain balance, Beckman says.
>
> Wicab poured money into a clinical trial to test its theory. The device
> indeed
> showed it could help people improve their balance, but those in the control
> group who used a sham device also improved their balance via the series of
> exercises completed as part of the study, Beckman says.
>
> The clinical trial had failed, and Wicab was running low on capital and
> forced
> to lay off a chunk of its staff, which had been in the 20s. “To be quite
> honest,
> I thought we were dead in the water,” Beckman recalls.
>
> But Wicab stayed afloat thanks to two things. First, it shifted its focus
> toward
> applying the technology to help the blind, Beckman says.
>
> Second, it won funding in 2010 from two high-profile sources to pursue its
> new
> plan. One was the U.S. Department of Defense, which awarded Wicab a $3.2
> million
> grant to see if the technology could help soldiers blinded by improvised
> explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan. The other source was Google,
> which
> gave Wicab $2.5 million to fund the 75-person study, but didn’t take an
> equity
> stake in the company, Beckman says.
>
> The Google funding was serendipitous for Wicab. A U.S. Air Force general and
>
> a
> Silicon Valley venture capitalist heard about the BrainPort device and
> arranged
> a demonstration at Google’s headquarters in California. The pair wanted to
> help
> Mike Malarsie, an Air Force senior airman who was recently blinded by an IED
>
> in
> Afghanistan.
>
> Malarsie tried out the BrainPort after a quick tutorial by neuroscientist
> Aimee
> Arnoldussen, who at the time was leading Wicab’s clinical research. Among
> the
> spectators were a few Google employees, including Eric Schmidt, Google’s
> executive chairman and former CEO, Arnoldussen says. Google later decided
> to
> back further BrainPort research partly because “they witnessed somebody
> benefiting from the technology and wanted to make a difference for people
> who
> are blind,” Beckman says.
>
> Malarsie says he was confused at first by the concept of the device.
> “You’re
> going to put this thing on your tongue and it’s kind of going to draw what
> you’re looking at. When they said it, it made absolutely no sense,” he
> says.
>
> But he quickly got the hang of the BrainPort, Arnoldussen says. In one of
> the
> tests, she held a ruler against a black sheet hung on the wall, and Malarsie
>
> had
> to figure out whether the ruler was pointing horizontally or vertically,
> based
> on the pattern of the electrical pulses on his tongue as he moved his head
> around. He felt “this weird tingly sensation,” but it was “not really
> uncomfortable,” Malarsie says. He could immediately tell which direction
> the
> ruler was being held. “I could—I use the word ‘see,’ it’s not sight—I could
>
> feel
> how she was moving this thing, can imagine what it would look like,” he
> says.
>
> Other exercises included discerning big letters put up on the wall and
> looking
> around the room to determine where the windows were, Malarsie says.
>
> “He just really started to explore the room on his own,” Arnoldussen says.
> “That
> demo was purely Mike’s doing. I facilitated the trial, but what was the
> most
> exciting, was just how intuitive he was.”
>
> For Malarsie, it was the closest thing to sight he’d experienced since an
> IED
> buried in a Kandahar road exploded in front of him several months earlier,
> instantly killing two soldiers and blowing him off a bridge into the river
> below. Shrapnel hit him in the face, destroying his left eye and tearing
> his
> right retina. “From the second it went off, it was pitch black,” Malarsie
> says.
>
> His memory of the immediate aftermath is “a bit murky.” But he knows that a
> fellow soldier and a medic pulled him out of the water, then the pair
> advanced
> into the nearby village, enemy gunfire raining down on them, to recover the
>
> body
> of the soldier who stepped on the IED, Malarsie says.
>
> In the hospital afterward, Malarsie’s father delivered the news: His two
> rescuers didn’t make it back alive. All told, four men died and six were
> wounded
> that day, he says.
>
> “It was right then that I knew I didn’t have any right to feel sorry for
> myself
> to let being blind hold me back,” Malarsie says. “I wouldn’t be alive if it
> wasn’t for what they did. I decided right then to live my life in a way
> that
> would make them happy, proud of me.”
>
> Malarsie, 27, who later rose to the rank of staff sergeant, retired from
> the
> military in 2013. These days, he travels the country giving speeches about
> his
> experiences, writes a blog reviewing technology for blind people, and
> consults
> for a guide dog company. He has a wife and three children and sounds upbeat
> about the future.
>
> The meeting at Google five years ago was one of the moments that made him
> excited about potential technological advances, as he listened to Google
> employees spit-balling ideas for improving the BrainPort device. “That was
> kind
> of the first time I thought, ‘You know what, with this kind of stuff
> happening
> right now, unless I die early, there’s no way I’m going to die without
> being
> able to see,’” Malarsie says. “At some point in my life, I’m going to look
> back
> and tell my grandkids, ‘Back when I was blind, I used to walk around like
> this.’
> Blindness will be a thing of the past.”
>
> That’s still far from reality, but new technologies that hold promise for
> the
> visually impaired are starting to move from research labs into the hands of
> consumers. California-based Second Sight Medical Products (NASDAQ: EYES)
> and
> French company Pixium Vision developed retinal implant systems for people
> blinded by retinitis pigmentosa. The technology takes images from a video
> camera
> attached to glasses and translates them into digital signals expressed as
> electrical pulses by electrodes in the eye implants. The optic nerve then
> delivers this information to the brain, which perceives patterns of
> light—again,
> not returning full sight, but still providing more stimuli to interpret
> surroundings than without the device.
>
> One of the challenges is these technologies have high price tags. Second
> Sight’s
> product has a base cost of more than $100,000, but the company has secured
> reimbursement from some insurers, including Medicare in certain situations.
>
> BrainPort’s device costs $10,000, which partly explains why sales have been
>
> hard
> to come by in Europe and Canada. The company intends to conduct additional
> demonstration studies aimed at securing reimbursement from insurers in
> Europe,
> Canada, and the U.S., if the FDA clears the device for sale, Beckman says.
>
> Wicab will try to raise at least $3 million more to fund the additional
> studies,
> Beckman says. The company will also try to break into the Chinese market,
> aided
> by Haiyin Capital, a Chinese venture capital firm that invested $3 million
> in
> Wicab last year.
>
> Beckman doesn’t know when he’ll get an answer from the FDA—Wicab submitted
> its
> approval request in August 2013. The process has “taken a lot longer” than
> he
> imagined, which he partly blames on caution by the agency as it evaluates
> the
> new technology.
>
> Beckman says the study of 75 subjects found that the electrical stimulation
>
> on
> the tongue was safe. Eighteen people dropped out of the study for various
> reasons, but the majority of those who completed the one-year assessment
> successfully used BrainPort to identify objects, locate and identify signs
> while
> navigating a hallway, and read words on a computer screen. The company
> intends
> to market BrainPort as a device that, after some training, can assist blind
> people with “orientation, mobility, and object recognition,” but is not a
> replacement for other aids like the white cane and guide dogs, Beckman
> says.
>
> If the FDA gives BrainPort the green light, the company would still have
> its
> work cut out to convince insurers to cover the device, and to continue
> advancing
> the technology and simplifying the design to make it more practical. But
> FDA
> clearance would still mark a significant step in Wicab’s journey to market.
>
> Malarsie’s experience with BrainPort during a six-month trial in 2011 gives
>
> a
> taste of how the device might help more users in the future. He trained to
> the
> point where he could use it to walk down the sidewalk without his guide dog
>
> or a
> cane. “It was a liberating experience to walk somewhere outside without my
> hands
> outstretched in front of me, without a cane. It’s something I haven’t done
> since
> losing my sight. It was pretty awesome.”
>
> In addition to navigation, BrainPort was useful for discerning where people
>
> were
> located in a room. There would be too much stimuli for it to be useful in a
> crowd of people, Malarsie says, but he could use it to chase his children
> around
> the house and “see” where they were going, for example. “It kind of helps
> with a
> sense of inclusion,” he says. “So, just to have a sense of where people are
> sitting, how many people are around—that’s extremely helpful.”
>
> Although Wicab has made the device less bulky over time, Malarsie says it
> could
> be improved if it used a smaller camera that wasn’t so noticeable, and also
>
> was
> higher resolution; if it didn’t have any wires; and if it didn’t require
> the
> user to hold the lollipop device in the mouth and take it out with their
> hand to
> talk. He didn’t mind that strangers stared at him while wearing the
> contraption
> because it was useful to him, but he knows some blind people wouldn’t want
> to
> wear the device in its current form. “They already stand out; they don’t
> want to
> stand out more,” he says.
>
> Beckman says Wicab is aware of these inconveniences and is working to tweak
>
> the
> design and continue improving the technology.
>
> Wicab intends to eliminate the handheld device that controls the intensity
> of
> the electronic pulses and the camera zoom, instead placing those controls on
>
> the
> glasses. That would free up one of the user’s hands, which would be useful
> because a cane or a guide dog leash might occupy the other hand, Beckman
> says.
>
> The company considered converting the lollipop device into a retainer that
> would
> sit on the roof of the mouth, and the person would lift the tongue and touch
>
> it
> to feel the electrical stimulation. But focus groups raised concerns about
> the
> possibility of misplacing the retainer, so the company intends to keep the
> lollipop device tethered to the glasses, Beckman says.
>
> Beckman acknowledges that the current version of BrainPort looks “somewhat
> strange,” and he recognizes that blind people “are still very much aware of
> aesthetics.” But people’s reactions can change after they get used to seeing
>
> new
> gadgets. “The first time I saw somebody with a Bluetooth in their ear, I
> thought
> that was really odd,” Beckman says. “I believe that wearable technology,
> including glasses, are going to continue to be developed. As that happens,
> our
> technology will fit right in.”
>
> A next frontier for Wicab is partnering with software developers to
> integrate
> mobile apps with BrainPort, which would open up new possibilities for more
> advanced and complementary features, Beckman says. “We need to couple the
> capability we have—which is to interpret simple information, or the big
> picture,
> I would call it—with the Internet, which has the ability already to decipher
>
> and
> interpret complex information.”
>
> One of the early ideas is that a blind person could tell the mobile app she
>
> is
> seeking, say, a bus stop. The app could look online to find the next bus’s
> estimated time of arrival, while also helping steer the user to the bus
> stop.
> The app could have access to the BrainPort’s video feed and could
> communicate to
> the user—perhaps audibly, or through a signal on the tongue, or through
> bone
> conduction, a la Google Glass–that the bus stop is within view.
>
> Beckman equates it to the technology that will enable driverless cars to
> stay
> within lanes and identify the signals of traffic lights.
>
> “A lot has developed in computer vision, face recognition, contextual
> understanding of surroundings, the idea of tapping into cloud resources,
> that
> didn’t exist” several years ago, says Arnoldussen, who left Wicab in 2012
> but
> still consults for the company. Once BrainPort can integrate those types of
> technologies, she adds, “I think the impact will be quite strong.”
>
> Simplifying the logistics of operating the device and combining it with
> mobile
> apps are the key to making BrainPort a more practical technology right “out
>
> of
> the box,” Beckman says. “I think the device, as it is, is useful and will
> meet
> with some success. But I think where we’re headed is in a direction that
> will
> greatly expand the number of people that want to purchase the technology.”
>
> Source URL:
> http://www.xconomy.com/wisconsin/2015/02/09/wicabs-wearable-vision-device-nears-u-s-market-thanks-to-google/?single_page=true
>
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