[blindza] Re: article: Wicab's wearable vision device nears U.S. market, thanks to Google
- From: William Brandes <williambrandes@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: blindza@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2015 01:18:43 -0500
um. my take. this is a "thanks to google" --- "we are such good
corporate citizens" publicity for a couple million $. cheaper than a
super bowl commercial by about half /smile. as for me, i'll stick with
the donuts. take care. william
On 2/9/15, Jacob Kruger <jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Yup.
>
> Plus, not sure if/when they'll ever actually get into full
> production/availability - nice idea, but it will take a bit longer before it
>
> gets taken up by too many people.
>
> Granted, a while ago, I bought the KNFB reader, classic PDA version, but,
> wanted it at the time, and money was something thought wouldn't really be an
>
> issue at that stage, but, compare what it cost then in 2006, as opposed to
> something like the currently available iPhone version's price -
> technological evolution, so, give this a decade or so, and it might be
> something worth considering, if it's then still anything like a bit of
> sensory substitution revolution...<smile>
>
> For now, will stick to things that are effectively freely available along
> with bits of technology already have my hands on - the vOICe, forms of echo
>
> location, my kSonar, etc. etc.
>
> Stay well
>
> Jacob Kruger
> Blind Biker
> Skype: BlindZA
> "Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "William Brandes" <williambrandes@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: <blindza@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2015 1:08 AM
> Subject: [blindza] Re: article: Wicab's wearable vision device nears U.S.
> market, thanks to Google
>
>
> 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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