Tech Talk: Reaching higher ground with RightHear app

Thanks to RightHear free app, people who are blind or visually impaired can navigate independently in public spaces such as universities, hospitals, airports and shopping malls.

MARCH 27, 2018 20:52

Stevie Wonder visits with Israeli start-up RightHear at a convention in California (photo credit: Courtesy) — Stevie Wonder visits with Israeli start-up RightHear at a convention in California

(photo credit: Courtesy)

Music legend Stevie Wonder came to visit the CSUN conference in San Diego last week to learn about the latest assistive technologies for people who are blind or visually impaired.

One of the latest solutions that gained his attention was the Israeli start-up company RightHear that demonstrated its indoor orientation solution for people who are blind or visually impaired in public spaces. Thanks to RightHear free app, people who are blind or visually impaired can navigate independently in public spaces such as universities, hospitals, airports and shopping malls, and even call for a local assistant if needed.

The app works with beacons that are installed in the venue together with an online content management system for the venue owner.

About 400 venues around the world have already installed the system, which makes RightHear the leading company in this domain.

“We were very excited to have Stevie Wonder at our booth and I believe he liked it very much,” said Idan Mair, RightHear CEO.

This June, the company plans to launch the third version of the RightHear solution with even more capabilities and features for users and clients. “There are almost eight million people who are legally blind in the US alone, and while most of the attention in the industry goes to online accessibility, RightHear is focused on the physical,” Idan said.

Reduce accidents in self-driving cars Cortica, a Tel Aviv-based firm that develops artificial intelligence for autonomous vehicles, has analyzed the dash cam video. The company concludes that cars so equipped, whose drivers fail to break or swerve before impact, have enough time to react and potentially save life.

CEO Igal Raichelgauz said Cortica’s self-driving AI system detects pedestrian 0.9 seconds before impact. At this point the car is around 15 meters away. The autonomous car’s cameras and radar system should have enough time to pick up the pedestrian and react to the situation.

With the advantage of machine response time and control, the right actions could be made to mitigate the damage.

Cortica’s Autonomous AI platform enables the car to predict and react to any situation ensuring a safe, intelligent and efficient driverless driving experience.

Cortica’s revolutionary automotive visual intelligence platform is built on the foundation of a mature, patented, self-learning technology. The robust. signature based representation and bottom-up, fine-grain, unsupervised learning capabilities enable a more detailed, comprehensive and precise interpretation of the car’s surroundings. The lightweight and efficient computational framework fortifies autonomous vehicles with the power of Autonomous AI. Cortica’s AI operates at the core of four product lines addressing the intricacies and complexities of driving with vehicles that are entirely autonomous.

With fine grain recognition the system identifies everything from pedestrians with baby strollers, to hoverboards, to persons walking while looking at their smartphone. The robust capabilities support all concepts and tangible objects.

Beyond sensory perception, Cortica’s Autonomous AI interprets complex contextual states with an added layer of predictive AI. This allows the system to place probabilities upon an object’s next course of action while simultaneously predicting additional objects likely to enter the frame. This deep understanding is key for both policy and planning.