Country: Spain

Category: Social

Project aim:  “Every five seconds someone goes blind in the world. Every minute a child goes blind. It is estimated that every year over seven million people go blind.”

World Health Organization (WHO)

Blindness is a serious and growing problem, due to age and diabetes as the main causes.

Why Eysynth was created?

Eyesynth is a company that was founded with the aim of developing assistive technologies for people who suffer a disability in any of their senses. The underlying concept is Augmented Sense: Using technology, other senses will be provided with extra information, in such a way that the damaged sense is largely compensated for.

Eyesynth is focused on the blind population and people with low vision. The company has designed Smartglasses for them.

What is Eyesynth?

Essentially, Eyesynth is an audio-visual system for the blind. It consists of a pair of glasses connected to a microcomputer. The system records the surrounding environment in three dimensions. Then, the collected data is converted into understandable audio for the blind, which allows them to identify the position of objects and obstacles, as well as their size and shape, with unprecedented accuracy.

The audio signals are non-verbal and abstract, so it is a universal product in terms of language. Also, the glasses transmit these sounds through the head bone, instead of covering the ears. Clean, non-invasive, comfortable and safe.

What is the problem?

Currently there is a paradoxical circumstance in the technological world: there are plenty of resources and techniques available, but that potential is far from being fully exploited to assist blind people. Antonio Quesada (CEO) reached this conclusion after many discussions with a friend whose son is blind.

What did we do to solve it?

Consequently, Antonio, with the collaboration of this father who wanted to improve his son´s life, began to develop the project, which later would be assisted by “Bitnia” (specialists in hardware development) and “Investment and Knowledge” (Investment Fund).

Four years later, a consolidated team (Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Scientific and Business Dev specialists) have developed the final stages for their Smartglasses for the blind people: the distribution is planned for 2nd quarter, 2018.

Accomplishments achieved:

“A Seal of International Quality”

In 2017, Eyesynth has been one of the selected companies to receive funding from the European Union’s Horizon2020 Research and Innovation Program under a grant agreement in the second phase.

This European Project Excellence certification is a great boost for the Eyesynth project’s entry into the market, as it will cover the final design and industrialization phases as well as the marketing phase over two years (2017-2019). Being part of the Horizon2020 research and development program is a guarantee for the project, as well as a seal of credibility for Users.

At this point, Eyesynth is fully immersed in the final design phase of the system and the industrialization of the manufacturing process to reach the marketing stage. It is expected that in the 2nd quarter of 2018 the product will be available for sale.

“Being part of this Award, we feel recognized as a cutting edge European Startup. Obtaining visibility and prestige from such a renowned institution is an amazing honour.”