A screenshot of the prototype Caremates developed. There is a dashboard with patients and relevant categories listed.

Sidewalks are full of obstacles. Mindlessly parked scooters, poles, bicycles - things commonly scattered across the city can become a big hazard for visually impaired people, who still depend a lot on their cane to navigate day-to-day. SmartAIs, a young and ambitious start-up from Munich, wants to change that:

Wouldn't it be great if visually impaired people could move around the city as freely as sighted people?

But how can you replace something as responsive as eyesight? The team came up with an excellent solution. Instead of building a potentially expensive gadget, they developed an app which leverages Artificial Intelligence and can be run on any smartphone.

Through attaching the phone to a person's chest with a strap bag, the smartphone camera functions as artificial eyes and safely navigates the user through audio signals around obstacles.

This simple yet effective set-up has been tested and validated with various users and promises to have groundbreaking effects on the quality of life of the visually impaired. Not only does it help people navigate more easily across town, it also empowers them to move confidently and feel less limited by their disability.

SmartAIs joined DPS as an already existing start-up team to learn more about user-centered design. Their team was completed by an Interaction Designer and a Software Engineer - with this extra (wo)man power, they started their 90 day journey at Digital Product School and are now continuing their success story in the UnternehmerTUM ecosystem.
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