Results of the past months: Seed, Oriense-1, OrPI, OrCC, StartupCup, Technopark
After our first publication a lot of time passed and several important events occurred. Now we will write more often, but for now let's summarize some of the past months.
First, we closed the planting round with TMT Investments and iDealMachine .
TMT is an investment company with headquarters in London, which also invested in ShareThis and was acquired by Yahoo Astrid. TMT shares are traded on the London Stock Exchange, and the team is co-founders of the RBC holding: German Kaplun, Artem Inyutin and Alexander Morgulchik.
iDealMachine is a venture fund and a startup accelerator that invested in us at the pre-sowing stage and gave way to the world of entrepreneurship. The iDM portfolio has several excellent projects, for example, Miiix is a platform for interaction between suppliers and online stores (winner of the Startup of the Year award), Prixel is a reproduction of painting on a 3D printer, Smart Museum is an interactive museum guide and xTurion is mobile monitoring robots .
Secondly, in the societies of the blind, testing of the first version of our device began. Oriense-1 allows you to move safely, warning of obstacles and suggesting ways to bypass. In addition to voice messages, “audio 3D-map” is used to transmit information - spatial audio markers that mark obstacles and other important objects of the scene. This allows you to quickly perceive the space by ear. A similar principle is used in audio games for the blind ( Audio Quake , Shades of Doom ), and in general, the blind are guided that way, “hearing” obstacles. At the same time it is impossible to hear all the obstacles, and here our device should come to the rescue. Sensory replacement is generally a fairly common approach in blind assistance devices, the most well-known such system, vOICe , converts an image from a camera into a sound image: the height of a pixel is transmitted in tone, and the brightness in volume. For the perception of this image requires a long training, and the use involves strong nerves - listen to the video.
')
We have currently implemented three modes of audio 3D:
- Virtual cane - the sound transmits the distance to the nearest point in the central zone of the camera's field of view. By moving the camera you can “feel” the space.
- Nearest obstacle - the sound transmits the distance to the nearest obstacle (if it is closer than 2 meters) and its position in the horizontal and vertical plane.
- Free pass - the sound indicates the direction of safe movement (if available).
All sound modes are duplicated by detailed voice descriptions on request, you can also turn on the automatic voice alert mode. For efficiency in this mode, the system says only “the passage is free”, “there is an obstacle” - there is less than 2 meters to the object and “stop” - one step to the object.
You can choose from three voice synthesizers - espeak, festival and rhvoice, with the ability to adjust the speed and volume of speech. The volume of the 3D audio is adjusted independently, there are also options: to sound continuously, to sound when a significant change in information (for example, the obstacle has moved more than 30 centimeters), to sound only when the key is held down. All thresholds in the future will also be adjustable. In addition to Russian, the system can speak English ( Jeff Hoffman liked it :)
The principle of operation of the device was estimated by the blind more than positively, the existing observations are quite removable, additions have already been partially implemented (alerts about narrow horizontal and vertical obstacles, pits, steps).
The main disadvantages of Oriense-1 are the bulkiness and the impossibility of working outside in sunlight (a side effect of using IR illumination to get a depth map).
I try on Oriense-1
The hardware device consists of a wearable computer based on a modified Odroid-U2 single - board device , a PrimeSense Carmine 3D camera (or its twin Asus Xtion), a control panel (as long as a normal USB NumPad) and bone-conductive headphones. The camera is mounted on the chest using a GoPro Chest Mount body kit or its analogue, made by us. Wearable computer by the way called the Soviet pager)
It is clear that this is a temporary solution, replaced by the Oriense-2, where the computer and the sensor will be combined in one case, the dimensions are significantly reduced, the depth map will be built by the stereo method, and a global one will be added to the local navigation.
Previously, we planned to release the Oriense-1 batch for sale as a device for navigating the premises. We had a pre-order for a small batch, but after Apple’s acquisition of PrimeSense, the sale of their sensors was stopped and our plans had to be adjusted. Although it is for the better. Now Oriense-1 is issued only for the subsequent transfer to blind for testing.
For Oriense-2, a single-board card and a stereo camera are currently manufactured, and installation has begun.
The single-card is based on the Exynos 4412 Prime Cpu module: Cortex-A9 Quad Core 1.7GHz, Mali-400 Quad-core 440MHz, 2Gbyte RAM.
Dimensions singleplate - 87 to 50 mm.
In the future, it is also planned to use a coprocessor for computer vision (for example, Myriad as in Project Tango).
The stereo camera will use Aptina MT9V034 wide-range luminance matrices, the board size is 85 by 35 mm.
There will also be a board with GPS / GLONASS and position sensors.
All this will be collected in the form of a small module worn on the chest, controlled via a wireless controller. In the future, it is planned to transfer the sensorics to the glasses, the computing module in this case will be worn in a pocket or on a belt.
The hardware base of Oriense-2 (we call it “camera-computer”) will also be sold as a separate solution for robotics. We plan to release by the summer.
In addition, we released OrPI - a navigation expansion card for the Raspberry PI, which includes a GPS / GLONASS receiver (Locosys LS2003C-G), an accelerometer + gyroscope + compass (MPU-9150), a 3G / GSM modem (SIM5350, optional). Built-in DC / DC allows you to connect and charge the battery, the MAX8903C chip - to control its charge.
The alpha version of the board is already built in the new version of DC / DC.
On the basis of this board, we develop a specialized GPS / GLONASS navigator for the blind with OpenStreetMap maps. The software is planned to be based on the Osmand application kernel ported under Linux, the source code will be open.
The board itself will also be sold separately, the party is currently being prepared for beta testing, we are open for pre-orders - sales@oriense.com .
Also, in March, we represented Russia at the world finals of the international competition for business models of Startup Cup , and took 3rd place. And last weekend on channel Russia 24 there was a release of the Technopark program, dedicated to us. In the video you can see how our blind consultant, Roman Kornatko, uses Oriense-1.
First, we closed the planting round with TMT Investments and iDealMachine .
TMT is an investment company with headquarters in London, which also invested in ShareThis and was acquired by Yahoo Astrid. TMT shares are traded on the London Stock Exchange, and the team is co-founders of the RBC holding: German Kaplun, Artem Inyutin and Alexander Morgulchik.
iDealMachine is a venture fund and a startup accelerator that invested in us at the pre-sowing stage and gave way to the world of entrepreneurship. The iDM portfolio has several excellent projects, for example, Miiix is a platform for interaction between suppliers and online stores (winner of the Startup of the Year award), Prixel is a reproduction of painting on a 3D printer, Smart Museum is an interactive museum guide and xTurion is mobile monitoring robots .
Secondly, in the societies of the blind, testing of the first version of our device began. Oriense-1 allows you to move safely, warning of obstacles and suggesting ways to bypass. In addition to voice messages, “audio 3D-map” is used to transmit information - spatial audio markers that mark obstacles and other important objects of the scene. This allows you to quickly perceive the space by ear. A similar principle is used in audio games for the blind ( Audio Quake , Shades of Doom ), and in general, the blind are guided that way, “hearing” obstacles. At the same time it is impossible to hear all the obstacles, and here our device should come to the rescue. Sensory replacement is generally a fairly common approach in blind assistance devices, the most well-known such system, vOICe , converts an image from a camera into a sound image: the height of a pixel is transmitted in tone, and the brightness in volume. For the perception of this image requires a long training, and the use involves strong nerves - listen to the video.
')
We have currently implemented three modes of audio 3D:
- Virtual cane - the sound transmits the distance to the nearest point in the central zone of the camera's field of view. By moving the camera you can “feel” the space.
- Nearest obstacle - the sound transmits the distance to the nearest obstacle (if it is closer than 2 meters) and its position in the horizontal and vertical plane.
- Free pass - the sound indicates the direction of safe movement (if available).
All sound modes are duplicated by detailed voice descriptions on request, you can also turn on the automatic voice alert mode. For efficiency in this mode, the system says only “the passage is free”, “there is an obstacle” - there is less than 2 meters to the object and “stop” - one step to the object.
You can choose from three voice synthesizers - espeak, festival and rhvoice, with the ability to adjust the speed and volume of speech. The volume of the 3D audio is adjusted independently, there are also options: to sound continuously, to sound when a significant change in information (for example, the obstacle has moved more than 30 centimeters), to sound only when the key is held down. All thresholds in the future will also be adjustable. In addition to Russian, the system can speak English ( Jeff Hoffman liked it :)
The principle of operation of the device was estimated by the blind more than positively, the existing observations are quite removable, additions have already been partially implemented (alerts about narrow horizontal and vertical obstacles, pits, steps).
The main disadvantages of Oriense-1 are the bulkiness and the impossibility of working outside in sunlight (a side effect of using IR illumination to get a depth map).
I try on Oriense-1
The hardware device consists of a wearable computer based on a modified Odroid-U2 single - board device , a PrimeSense Carmine 3D camera (or its twin Asus Xtion), a control panel (as long as a normal USB NumPad) and bone-conductive headphones. The camera is mounted on the chest using a GoPro Chest Mount body kit or its analogue, made by us. Wearable computer by the way called the Soviet pager)
It is clear that this is a temporary solution, replaced by the Oriense-2, where the computer and the sensor will be combined in one case, the dimensions are significantly reduced, the depth map will be built by the stereo method, and a global one will be added to the local navigation.
Previously, we planned to release the Oriense-1 batch for sale as a device for navigating the premises. We had a pre-order for a small batch, but after Apple’s acquisition of PrimeSense, the sale of their sensors was stopped and our plans had to be adjusted. Although it is for the better. Now Oriense-1 is issued only for the subsequent transfer to blind for testing.
For Oriense-2, a single-board card and a stereo camera are currently manufactured, and installation has begun.
The single-card is based on the Exynos 4412 Prime Cpu module: Cortex-A9 Quad Core 1.7GHz, Mali-400 Quad-core 440MHz, 2Gbyte RAM.
Dimensions singleplate - 87 to 50 mm.
In the future, it is also planned to use a coprocessor for computer vision (for example, Myriad as in Project Tango).
The stereo camera will use Aptina MT9V034 wide-range luminance matrices, the board size is 85 by 35 mm.
There will also be a board with GPS / GLONASS and position sensors.
All this will be collected in the form of a small module worn on the chest, controlled via a wireless controller. In the future, it is planned to transfer the sensorics to the glasses, the computing module in this case will be worn in a pocket or on a belt.
The hardware base of Oriense-2 (we call it “camera-computer”) will also be sold as a separate solution for robotics. We plan to release by the summer.
In addition, we released OrPI - a navigation expansion card for the Raspberry PI, which includes a GPS / GLONASS receiver (Locosys LS2003C-G), an accelerometer + gyroscope + compass (MPU-9150), a 3G / GSM modem (SIM5350, optional). Built-in DC / DC allows you to connect and charge the battery, the MAX8903C chip - to control its charge.
The alpha version of the board is already built in the new version of DC / DC.
On the basis of this board, we develop a specialized GPS / GLONASS navigator for the blind with OpenStreetMap maps. The software is planned to be based on the Osmand application kernel ported under Linux, the source code will be open.
The board itself will also be sold separately, the party is currently being prepared for beta testing, we are open for pre-orders - sales@oriense.com .
Also, in March, we represented Russia at the world finals of the international competition for business models of Startup Cup , and took 3rd place. And last weekend on channel Russia 24 there was a release of the Technopark program, dedicated to us. In the video you can see how our blind consultant, Roman Kornatko, uses Oriense-1.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/217187/
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