- 180 million people worldwide are visually impaired, with that number growing by 2-3 million each year. Existing assistive technologies are expensive, uncomfortable to use, require training, and have low reliability.
- Oriense aims to address this with an affordable indoor navigation system using computer vision, 3D audio, and bone conduction headphones to provide obstacle detection and navigation assistance. Their first product, Oriense Indoor, will retail for $1000.
- The company projects sales of 5,000 units by 2018, expecting to become profitable that year. They plan to expand to outdoor GPS navigation and develop add-ons for other markets like robotics and wearables.