.lumen - Glasses for the blind

Cornel Amariei is a Romanian born inventor, speaker and entrepreneur. Raised in a family where both of his parents have severe locomotive handicap and his sister suffers from grave cerebral disabilities, Cornel was motivated to build things which permit people to live better lives. 

Surpassing the condition of his family, he became Head of Innovation in one of the largest automotive companies in the world at 24, and after, founded .lumen - glasses for the blind, a startup which creates assistive systems helping the blind lead more independent lives. 

For his work, Cornel was nominated in the first Forbes 30 under 30 Europe list, in 2016, and is the first Romanian to obtain JCI's Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World award. Now, he leads .lumen as CEO & Co-founder and also leads a consultancy company in innovation. 

There are 40M blind people worldwide, expected to grow to over 100M in 2050. While there are solutions for information passing (text-to-speech) and for recognising objects (Microsoft SeeingAI or OrCam), for navigation and movement independence, the same two solutions are used for 5000 years: The guide dog and the cane. The guide dog is useful, but costs 40-60 thousand $ to be trained and blind individuals can't take care of them, resulting in only 28 thousand guide dogs to 40M blind.

.lumen builds a pair of glasses that help the blind navigate. They understand the spatiality of the environment using optic and radar sensors, recognise objects and walkable paths contextually, and transfer the information to the blind using haptic impulses on the forehead and auditory cues. 

Using the .lumen system, a blind individual can travel, understand the surroundings, perform new tasks and higher the quality of life.

The lack of mobility and independence of the visually impaired. 

Currently, there are 40 million blind individuals and 216 million visually impaired worldwide, expected to increase to 114 million blind by 2050 [2015, Bourne et al.]. Even worse, 3,3M individuals are under the age of 40. While some gain visual impairment through avoidable causes, most people under 40% obtain it from birth.

Studies performed by .lumen show that the most used mobility and independence solution is the guide dog. However, all guide dog owners not only raised concern to the difficulty of owning and taking care of a guide dog, but the majority indicated that they will not obtain a second one, when the initial one retires. All owners indicated the solution as tremendously useful, but the drawbacks it brings are surpassing the help. 

.lumen builds a system which offers the benefits of a guide dog, without the drawbacks one brings. Guide dogs are useful, they provide guidance around difficult obstacles, they identify objects of interest even in complex situations such as identifying an empty seat in a bus. They protect the user from harmful situations through programmed disobedience. In the same time, they are living pets and require all the care a living animal needs. 

.lumen implements the same functions as a guide dog, and even more, using advanced robotics technologies, artificial intelligence and new proprietary feedback technologies using haptics and the auditory senses. It provides information in an analogous way to the guide dog, but offers more capabilities powered by robotics, IoT and AI. And it does it all as a technological solution, requiring minimum care.   

Blind individuals can be found all over the world. Locally, for development, we are working with blind communities in Romania. They are incredibly diverse, from teachers, sports people (blind football), some are even entrepreneurs. We hired the leading Romanian researcher in disability studies, who is also visually impaired, to lead the testing of .lumen. 

It's incredibly hard to build something for people with a handicap you don't have. This is why we are constantly testing everything we do with our testers. We have 120 testers registered now and every progress we have its being validated with them. One of the best activities we had before the pandemic was a sensibility course, in which all .lumen employees were blindfolded for a day and offered blind assistive technologies. They spent 8 hours blindfolded, together with blind individuals, and attempted to perform various activities. At the end of the day it was a very sensitive moment for all. 

Day by day we are trying to understand better the issues the blind have and are adapting our technologies to better help them.  

In general, people with handicaps have limited opportunities. Visual disabilities, especially blindness, is one of most restrictive handicaps. Solutions such as the guide dog or some technical solutions enhance their live, but either bring more drawbacks or not provide sufficient assistance.

.lumen was built with one purpose only: to help. Here, we are working to try to elevate the life of the people who need help most. 

The first idea for .lumen came when I was a 2nd year student at university, back in 2014. Then, in a conversation with a friend, we reached the expression "glasses for the blind". We began searching and found nothing. Being engineering students we tried various technologies which we thought would help, but failed to properly aid.

Years later, while being Head of Innovation at a large automotive manufacturer, I identified a small R&D company which previously built everything ranging to electronics for satellites. After 2 years of collaboration and over 50 prototypes for the automotive world built together, I asked the founder, Prof. Gabriel, if he wants to do something different. I explained my idea for .lumen and how it grew, and my motivation of helping individuals with handicap. He loved it. Months later I quit the automotive company and put all my savings into founding .lumen. Half of Gabriel's R&D company joined.

When I was 3 years old I promised my parents, both suffering from severe locomotive handicaps, that I will find a solution to their problem. 20 years later, at 23, I took a sabbatical and founded a startup which built assistive systems for people with locomotive handicaps. The solution worked, my parents were beta testers. But I lost the company due to IP reasons to the company I was working in. And with it I lost the chance of fulfilling the promise. And so I decided to solve other handicaps, and blind people had the fewest solutions available to them.

Growing up as the only person without a handicap in a family where every member had, I understood through what people like my sister and parents are going through. And it's hard to do nothing when you know you can help.

Academically I'm a computer scientist and an electrical engineer. However, these are a very small part of the skills which help me deliver the project. When I was 14 I had to leave home to high-school, as my parents couldn't financially support me anymore. I lived by designing websites for companies which didn't had one for the first months. Then, I funded the first high-school robotics club in Romania, where I prepared over 200 students in the following years, students which obtained over 60 international awards in robotics. I learned leadership, and made every possible mistake, then. In the 10th grade  I funded my first company, together with high school colleagues, building clocks out of vinyl disks. We sold over 1,000 pieces and we all learned finance and basics of entrepreneurship. One year later I was working in R&D at a company building X-Ray truck scanning robots, where I learned about how large companies work. Same year I funded my second company which sold a periodic table app, back in 2011 when there weren't so many. 300,000 people got our app and we all paid our tuitions through it. Then, I learned the most while working in Automotive, managing innovation R&D projects. From IP to science experiments, intercultural teams, million euros budgets, large organisations and especially processes. 

After all, I guess I only have two skills: I'm curious and I just can't quit building things that help. The rest can be learnt. 

Building systems for people without vision is hard. And it's even harder when they don't want to help. Blind people are very reluctant to change, especially here in East Europe. While we have amazing blind testers which we communicate with on a day by day basis, there are the people who simply can't accept that others are trying to help them. Because each time someone came wanting to help, it was a scheme to benefit from the visually impaired. 

At the beginning, local blind associations didn't want to offer support. And it continued for months. We had to perform interviews in Germany with blind individuals for a while to better understand their problems. At some point, I began standing next to the entrance of the local blind association and waited for blind individuals to come and addressed them directly. After a few weeks they accepted a meeting and were convinced to collaborate.

But this attitude continues. Weekly we receive scrutiny, even threats from blind individuals. And it's definitely heartbreaking. But we keep pushing. 

Two experiences, 10 years in-between. At 14, when I was admitted to high school, I decided to move to the high school dormitory, as my parents could no longer financially support me. I moved and quickly found a job and began helping my family. I continued to do so for the next 12 years, providing everything needed for their treatments. 

2 years ago when I funded .lumen I convinced a few of my ex colleagues to join this new idea, under the promise we had investors which are putting their money in. Unfortunately it was not easy initially to find the investors, and I decided to support from my savings their salaries. I spent all the money saved from my executive management position to make sure they had everything to build .lumen together with me. Luckily, after a few months, we found investors and .lumen is growing rapidly.  

What we are attempting is incredibly hard and we need all the support in the world. The Elevate Prize can help us in our mission to help the people which need most.