Q&A: Smart glasses poised to reshape assistive technology industry

Artificial intelligence has opened new doors in assistive technology, allowing more personalized options for people with visual and hearing impairments.

Smart glasses offer a wearable option to assist people with a wide range of needs. While previous versions of wearable technology may have been bulky and limited in their capabilities, artificial intelligence (AI) has prompted the development of sleeker designs with more advanced capabilities, including reading assistance.

Healio spoke with Paul Travers, president and CEO at Vuzix, a New York-based company that supplies wearable augmented reality (AR) display technology, about the future of assistive technology and smart glasses.

Healio: What should optometrists know about smart glasses?

Travers: Every person has a unique pair of eyes. Based upon the kind of smart glasses being used, they can either work with a person’s existing prescription, or a custom prescription will need to be used.

At Vuzix, users can get their prescription with the glasses. We also sell certain smart glasses that work over the top of glasses, as do many other companies. For broader markets and for almost anybody who’s going to be out in the real world, having scripts on scripts doesn’t work well. Getting a pair of AR glasses that allows users to get the scripts built right into them is going to be the preferred method.

Healio: Who would be a good candidate for smart glasses?

Travers: We sell smart glasses in a lot of different areas of the world today, mostly focused on the enterprise space. One example is in warehouses, where glasses show employees exactly where and how to stack a pallet. It’s a complicated job to pack efficiently and takes weeks to learn, but it takes only days with a pair of smart glasses.

Smart glasses are also being used for language translation or scripting. Some people spend $8,000 for hearing aids, and they still don’t work very well. Smart glasses can listen to what people are saying and put text in the glasses for users to read. From a hearing-impaired perspective, if users can read and see, it can open up so many new possibilities.

This concept of being able to take what’s being spoken and put it in text is also helpful if someone is speaking another language and you know only English. These glasses can be a universal translator. The ability to do this is new, especially with glasses that are fashion-forward.

Another good example is glasses with built-in cameras. Users can ask the glasses what’s in front of them, and the glasses will describe the scene using ChatGPT and AI. We also have a pair that offers sign language interpretation.

In general, AI will continue to augment a person’s capabilities in the real world. We believe this is going to be game-changing as it evolves.

Healio: How are today’s smart glasses different from older assistive technology?

Travers: Some of the older, low vision assistive technology included immersive glasses with cameras that displayed imagery in front of user’s eyes, but they were big, heavy and might only work for 20% of people. The technology has come a long way since then, because of AI and innovations in the form factor. AR glasses are finally getting to a point where people would want to wear them.

Having glasses that allow users to read what people are saying has never been done before. That’s a whole new paradigm and it’s taken real-time AI to do language translation. It started to work well in the last few years and now it’s almost flawless.

Healio: Where do you see the assistive technology industry in the future, especially as it pertains to smart glasses?

Travers: These kinds of glasses are going to be everywhere. They’re going to change the world. They’re going to be like the smartphone, and in some cases they will be like a use-specific pair of sunglasses. They will be offered at different price points, and users will probably pay more in the long run for the services than the glasses themselves.

The glasses are on a path to become thinner, lighter and more fashion-forward over time. They’re going to have more built-in capabilities, but they’re going use the cloud to do most of the work. With everything done in the cloud using AI, it will open up the world from an applications perspective for all kinds of assistive technologies.

Healio: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Travers: The world is going to change, and the need for smart glasses is only getting started. Just like the smartwatch business ran over the top of the wristwatch business, glasses are going to change over the next 3 to 5 years in a big way.