Amman, June 30 (Petra) -- An engineering team from the Department of Communications Engineering and the Internet of Things at Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT) has developed a prototype of AI-powered smart glasses designed to help blind and visually impaired people better understand their surroundings and navigate independently.
The prototype combines wireless communications and generative artificial intelligence to enable users to read signs and instructions, identify objects, and move more safely. The system was developed under the supervision of Ashraf Tahat with engineers Hussein Al-Hraibi and Ahmad Asim participating in the project.
Tahat said the wearable component of the system was designed and manufactured using 3D printing technology. It periodically captures images of the user's surroundings and wirelessly transmits them to a dedicated smartphone application.
The application instantly sends the images via cellular networks to a cloud computing platform, where they are processed and analyzed using optical character recognition (OCR), contextual scene analysis and generative AI algorithms to identify objects, recognize text and interpret the user's environment.
The processed information is then converted into audio output delivered through Bluetooth headphones, enabling users to receive natural-language descriptions of nearby scenes, obstacles and written text, helping them interact with their surroundings with greater confidence while providing practical situational awareness.
Tahat said the project responds to a growing global need, noting that according to the World Health Organization, more than 2.2 billion people worldwide live with visual impairment, including about 43 million who are blind.
He added that international eye care organizations project the number could increase by as much as 55 percent by 2050 because of population aging and changing lifestyles.
He said integrating computer vision technologies with large language models opens the way for a new generation of wearable assistive technologies that go beyond conventional systems limited to obstacle alerts or distance measurement.
//Petra// NQ
