St. Pete?s computer vision solution for visually impaired wins StartUp Cup

St. Petersburg?s Oriense has won this year?s StartUp Cup competition of business models with its device enabling visually impaired and blind people to navigate through the modern city

St. Petersburg?s Oriense has won this year?s StartUp Cup competition of business models with its device enabling visually impaired and blind people to navigate through the modern city completely unaided, the StartUp Cup event website announced last week. StartUp Cup SPb has been put together by AAA Trust, a Russian investment company, Russian Venture Company (RVC), the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce, JCI St. Petersburg, and some other companies and organizations. The first-ever Russian final of the StartUp Cup business model contest took place on November 26, 2013 at the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce. At the moment, Oriense has a fully developed prototype that can generate voice warnings about obstacles and recommendations about possible detours. At the heart of the new device is a specialized 3D sensor and computer vision algorithms that make it possible to analyze an environment and convert images into a text description of a user?s whereabouts. The 3D sensor is based on Oriense?s proprietary stereo camera and enables to generate a three-dimensional image both in daylight and at nighttime, outdoors and indoors alike...