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Transcription
Amos Miller, the CEO of Glide, and his team are developing a new mobility aid for blind individuals. Glide is a self-guided mobility device that uses AI and robotics to navigate and avoid obstacles, providing an alternative to canes and guide dogs. Users hold the handle of Glide while it steers and keeps them safe. The goal is to help blind individuals regain their independence and confidently navigate their surroundings. The device can potentially integrate with other applications such as mapping to provide more comprehensive navigation assistance. The video testimonials from blind individuals highlight the potential benefits and excitement surrounding Glide. Let's get ready to rumble! Y'all ready for this? Let's get ready to rumble! Well, good morning everyone, and welcome to another Coffee Time with Blind United. It is Friday, TGIF, and we are joined in the studio today, we have a special guest, we have Amos, he is the CEO of Blyden's, and we have one of his staff members, Allison, with him, as well as, of course, Pedro, our man that works in the keys in the background, and hopefully Brittany will be here soon, so good morning to everybody. Good morning, nice to meet everyone. Nice to meet you as well, Amos. So what we do here, let me get this out of the way, and then we can get right into you, my brother, so today we have two interest groups on our Blind United interest groups today, and first at 5 o'clock p.m. Pacific time, we will have Braille reading and writing with Christina Palmer, and she, again, is teaching the new UEB, so if you're interested in that, please join Christina at 5 p.m. and immediately right after her, you get me again, and I'm showing the last in the Matrix series, was it Matrix Resurrection, or Redemption, or whatever it is, something like that, I can't remember, I haven't actually seen it yet, but we're going to watch it tonight. Is it the fourth installment? Yeah, the fourth one, yes. Revolution. Oh, Revolution, okay, something like that. Okay, well, we're going to have that at 6 o'clock p.m., so get your favorite snacks and drinks and come out and join us, so anyway, we're going to get right into Amos, because, man, I'm really excited about this new technology and what Glideness is doing with the Glide, and so you want to say a couple words before we play your video, Amos? Just great to be here. I'm just a brief introduction. I'm Amos Miller, the founder of Glideness, and I'm here with Allison on my team, and we're developing a new mobility aid, a new mobility aid that uses autonomous guiding technology to help us all blind folks get around more independently, and excited to be on the show and participate, so, yeah. Well, we're grateful to have you. Let's roll the video. It's all on you, Rachel. Let's hear what we got. To the camera in a bright and airy space. My name is Amos Miller, and I'm the founder and CEO of Glideness. I lost my sight in my 20s, actually, a genetic eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa. I've used my white cane for some time and guide dogs since the age of 25 or so, and I have always looked for new kinds of mobility aids that help me to get around more independently and help many others. Amos walks outside past large windows using Glide. And the work in Glideness is very much the next phase of my own journey in that exploration. Amos enters a doorway to a large public space. Glide is a self-guided mobility aid that simply guides the person. Amos walks across large atrium using Glide, and we see insert video close-ups of the Glide. We use AI and robotics to guide the person. The device is physically connected to the ground, sits on two wheels. The user holds the handle, and Glide steers the way, avoids obstacles, and keeps the user safe. It's very smooth, very enjoyable to use, and really providing, I think, for the first time, another alternative for people alongside the cane or the guide dog, an alternative that can really help them get back on their feet and regain their independence. Mike speaks to camera in a bright and airy space. I'm Mike May. I went blind at age three, and I've been learning how to get around and to navigate since then. I've used a cane, and I've had seven guide dogs, and I've been involved in inventing the first accessible GPS and indoor navigation, and it's a constant challenge to figure out how to get around better as a blind person. Close-up of Glide guiding Mike around a sharp granite wall corner. The two biggest challenges for blind people are reading and getting around. And getting around involves not just knowing where you're going, but what about all the obstacles in between. So something that can sense what's in front of you and help you to avoid them, Mike approaches reception desk and is guided around the front edge. He navigates around the front and stops at the receptionist. So the importance about having a guide robot is that it gives me options where I don't have to worry about taking care of a dog or feeling my way along with a white cane. Those are great options for a lot of people. But having another option to guide you with sensors is really helpful to address the wide variety of needs and abilities of various blind people of different visual acuities. I'm Joel Dotson. Yeah, so for the last six and a half years, I've been totally blind. Started using a cane in 2017. Back in 2017, when I lost my sight, I was thinking that, you know, why isn't there kind of an electronic robotic device that could help you navigate, that could, you know, find all the obstacles for you and take you around those and integrate with maps and, you know, things like that, kind of like a robotic guide dog. But to see something like Glide, I find exciting, especially because it's from, broadly speaking, from the community, being built for the community. What excites me a lot about Glide is the potential for integration with, say, other applications. You know, I think mapping is probably the obvious, you know, if I'm traveling somewhere and I'm walking around the hotel in a neighborhood I'm not familiar with, and, you know, it can tell me about intersections I'm approaching. And so I'm really excited with the ability for the Glide to, you know, do more of the navigation. So my name is Morgan. I found out that Glide is designed with people like me in mind, people who might not be the most confident travelers, people who might be scared to get out there and navigate their communities for many reasons. From overhead, we see Amos navigate an obstacle course of colored spheres, then see him complete the course at ground level. A cane and a dog is not a solution for everybody, and Glide seeks to be a solution for everybody. I envision Glide giving me the opportunity and the confidence to actually leave my building without being afraid. The camera rotates slowly around Glide. I view Glide as my door to the outside world. And the goal really is that you are back on your feet and you are able to start your mobility journey at the outset. Logo comes on screen. I think people deserve to have this independence, and I am excited to be contributing. All right. I think that was an abrupt end to the video. I think it was. I apologize. I've seen Allison here twice, and she needed to be added to the stage, so I was trying to add her. That's okay. The video was at the logo, and, Ed, I hope that gave folks a bit of a taste for what Glide is and we can continue. Okay. I truly apologize. I really do. Okay. So, well, okay. Well, we'll move forward. Allison, you are still with us, correct? Hopefully she's with us. Yes, I am. Yes, I am. Sorry, I had to come up to you. Okay. Yeah, I just didn't know because you were showing up twice. I said, well, why is she not there? Let me add her back to the stage. I have a slide up that I can present. Okay, okay, okay. No problem. No problem. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Thank you for what you're going to help Paige do in the background. So, anyway, man, I'm sorry, Amos. I really like this, man. I mean, it's a whoo. I mean, it's like having a guide dog without having a guide dog in essence, right? You can definitely put it that way. It doesn't wag its tail as much. Well, you don't have any deposits to pick up. That is a plus right there. That part right there. I mean, I'm being honest. That's the biggest reason I don't want one because, you know, I love the tool that they are, you know, and all of that kind of stuff. But that's one of the biggest drawbacks for me. I don't know. But as long as I keep this thing charged up, I don't have to worry about it. Yeah, well, how do you get around today, Ed, if I may ask? I'm a cane user. I've been a cane user. I became totally blind in 08. I went to training center in 11. And I've been a cane user ever since. Right. So, I mean, you know, again, I know people with dogs and stuff like that. But, you know, just never wanted to go that way. I didn't want to, you know, make that commitment and have to deal with that part of it, you know? I mean, not only that. I mean, some days I just don't want to go out. But if you've got a service animal, you've got to get up. You've got to walk that service animal every day, you know, that responsibility. I just didn't want it. But this sounds like something that would be great. If I don't want to go out, no problem. Just leave it on the charger and it's fine until I get ready to go. You got it. That's what this is about. Maybe add a few kind of little bit of background maybe about what we've got here, just to give people a bit of a flavor. So, first of all, I think I mentioned it in the video as well. But I'm also blind. I do actually use a guide dog. I'm on my sixth guide dog. Okay. His name is Boots. Okay. And he's a wonderful dog. I actually got my first guide dog when I actually grew up in Israel. And then I lived in England for 15 years. I had two full-time dogs in England and one that didn't quite work out, and I lived in Singapore with one of my dogs, which was a really different experience because I lived in Singapore for three years and I was the chair of the guide dog's board there. And I take pride in doubling the number of dogs in Singapore from three to six. Okay. Well, I'm kind of saying it jokingly but also seriously. In some places in the world, there are all kinds of other cultural challenges, not only with dogs but people with disabilities as well. Of course. You know, like in the U.S. here, we're so used to kind of having people with disabilities come out and be part of the community and part of the society and tools and technologies and services to support that. That doesn't necessarily exist everywhere else in the world. Exactly. And so then I came here to the U.S. I got Boots about three years ago and he's my beautiful guide. But I've also worked in technology for many years. I worked at Microsoft for many years. Some of you guys might be familiar with Soundscape. Of course I am. Of course I am. I loved Soundscape when it came out and I'm loving the new one, Voice Vista, even now. Yeah. It's been a great evolution. I love it. It's kind of been my baby for many years while I was at Microsoft. And since we've opened it up, it's been great to see the community picking it up and creating variants and really pushing it forward. So I'm delighted with that. And with that, Ed, while I was working a lot with the community, it's really become quite clear to me that we have these amazing technologies, but we still have a lot of people who, unless you are a confident cane user or a confident guide dog user, these technologies don't necessarily empower you to get out of the home independently. And the gap is quite staggering in terms of the sheer number of people with significant or total sight loss who are basically completely dependent on a family member or caregiver to get out and about. And as you can imagine, that is especially acute for people who lose their sight later in life. Right. We've been talking to a lot of people over the years about – sorry, not over the years, just recently over the last few days and months about Glide, and we hear people who have used their cane all their life, and when they reach the age of 60, 70, they just feel that they don't have the same level of sharpness that they used to have to use the cane confidently, and they feel just less safe, less capable. And so what really we try to do here is to bring another option for people, right? Right. Another primary mobility aid alongside the cane and the guide dog. So people have different options in different settings, different times of their lives, and so forth. So that's really – and when we – I've worked for many years in trying to do this with various wearables. As you know, I work on soundscape, using audio, using haptics. We have all of these kinds of technologies, but at some point I really reached the conclusion that if we're going to guide – if we're going to help people sort of really help them move around safely, we need something that is physically connected to the ground and actually guides. Right. And that's what Glide is. Okay. Yeah, is that making sense? Yeah, I mean, it makes perfect sense. It really does. And, again, you know, I'm in that zone right there where you're talking about, Amos. I mean, I'm 67 now. Right. I mean, I'm not going to say my skills or my cane skills are fading, but let me ask you this. So my biggest issue is new areas, you know, unfamiliar areas that I'm not used to, I haven't been to, whatever. You know what I'm saying? So this would actually help me in that situation? That's the goal. Okay. That's the goal. So let me just kind of run through, because I know that a lot of listeners wouldn't have been able to see the visuals on the video. So just let me kind of paint a picture of what it looks like exactly and how it works. First of all, it is a primary mobility aid. So the first goal of Glide is to move you safely, to allow you to walk safely, avoid obstacles, stay on the path, target nearby destinations like a drop curb, a door, elevator, those kind of, yeah. So that's sort of at the ground level what a mobility aid has to do. And as I described it a little bit on the video, imagine it's a long handle. You hold the handle, your hand is somewhere around your waist level, the handle extends at 45 degrees to the ground in front of you, and it rests on two wheels. The wheels are side by side. They're about eight inches between the wheels. The wheels are about six inches in diameter, so they're not tiny wheels. They're good-sized wheels, and actually in the next level, next prototype, we intend to increase the size of the wheels even further. So that's kind of the image, right? You have that long handle, the two wheels on the ground, and you hold the handle, you nudge the device forward, and you simply walk. Now, one key aspect of it, which is a little bit interesting for people when they first kind of try it, the device doesn't actually pull you. You are wheeling it forward, and the moment you start wheeling it, the wheels begin to steer. They steer left a bit, right a bit, and you basically follow it, right? You follow where the device is going. You walk along the sidewalk. It will keep you on a nice, smooth path along the sidewalk. Even if there's various street furniture and lampposts and trees, Glide will sort of help you keep a smooth path. It will go around those obstacles a lot like a guide dog would do. When you get to the curb, it will steer you to the curb, and at the point that you get to the curb, and again, the whole way, you are dictating the speed, okay? You are walking. You can walk really slow. You can walk fast. It doesn't make any difference. So basically, it's walking at your pace. At your pace, exactly, and as you approach the curb, Glide has a haptic handle, so the handle will actually vibrate briefly to indicate to you that you're about to stop because you're reaching the curb, okay? So you slow down, and as the wheels reach the edge of the curb, it will apply the brakes, yeah? So it has brakes in the wheels, so you basically get to a complete stop. You walk up, feel the edge with your foot, and once you're ready to cross, you bring the angle of the handle back to 45 degrees, wheel the device over the edge, and walk across the street. And at that point, Glide will make sure that you walk in a straight line across the street, that it's targeting the up curb, and get you off the street on the other side. So that's a kind of basic behavior. You can also then continue to walk, and if you're approaching the building that you're trying to get to, it can help you to spot that door, and then guide you along to the door. You know, the kind of the last mile issue that we're all familiar with. Right, right, right. Okay, I'm in front of the door, but where is it, right? Right. And the way that it does those tricks is that basically we have, again, if you have in your mind the image of Glide at this 45 degree angle with the handle on the top, right at the top by the handle, there is a camera. And the camera gives it a good view of all the space in front of you. There are radars at the bottom around the kind of the wheel's height. Really, the radars deal with near range obstacles, and dropped curbs, and so on, to make sure that you're kept safe. And the combination of those sensors, as well as a bunch of other things that go on inside, and GPS input, and so on, Glide takes all of those inputs to guide you on those routes. So that's sort of the base level, if you like, the foundational mobility aid features. And now the next thing is what you talked about, Ed, about, okay, how do I get around in new places, right? How do I learn new routes? How do I manage in more complex environments? Yeah? Yes. And here we're looking at, and I'm saying looking because I want to emphasize that the device is still in development. We'll talk in a few minutes about sort of our roadmap and when we expect the device to get into beta and shipping, and why we are here talking about it so early. And the main reason is because this is such a, I think, going to be a device that makes such an impact in the community that we have to engage the community on every step of the way. And so we'll come back to talk about that. But I will just divert it here to explain why I'm talking about in future tense. The way that we are looking at the device working and guiding you in new places is, you know, take two examples. Let's say you work in one building and you've moved to a new building or a new job, okay? And so you have new routes to learn, okay? The way we envisage that working and the capability that we're working on right now is pre-mapped routes. So you can walk, glide the route that you wanted to do, outdoor and indoor. Let's say the route from your house to the bus stop, from the other end to the building. And the, you know, six key routes that you do in that building, you can show glide those routes. And the next time you do them, glide will take you on those routes. So that's option one where it's pre-mapped routes. And we believe that that feature, which is very attainable in the near term, is actually going to be one of the things that really enables people who are not confident cane users, who are not confident guide dog users but need to, but want to start doing their initial exploration. It could be just a walk around the block or to the nearby park or to the local store, yeah? Get them confident on one route with glide. So you train glide on that one route and then they can do that route and start to build their wayfinding and orientation mobility skills as they go. Yeah? Yeah. So that's, and then when, if they're in that new building, they can get from the entrance to their cubicle, to the bathroom, to the kitchenette, to all the different places in that building, confidently, even with little training to start with or memorizing the route, because glide now can guide you on those routes. The other option, which you're looking for, is how can glide, A, can I give it destinations, and B, can it tell me about what's going on in the environment so that I can make decisions? Yeah? So, and that's where we look at map integration, right? Where maps, where glide works with maps. And we're looking really at two options. One is that glide does have certain maps, but I think one of the more interesting options is when glide can integrate with other navigation aids. Okay? You mentioned earlier that you enjoy Soundscape. Why shouldn't you use Soundscape to choose the, you know, you're in some hotel and there's a restaurant nearby and you choose that restaurant and glide will help you get to that restaurant nearby. Yeah? Or using Google Maps to do it. Or if you are in a Target store, using the Target app to choose what products you want and then glide will help you to find those, the aisle, by basically working in tandem with the Target app to get there. So, I don't really want to build a whole new navigation app for glide. I don't like it. Yeah. You see what I mean? On the other hand, I also understand the requirement that people have to say, hey, you know, I'm near Starbucks, where is it? Right? Or I, you know, so there's different aspects to navigating in unfamiliar places. I think one of the things that are really going to help is this whole idea of scene description, scene analysis, what you've already been experiencing probably through Be My Eyes. So, imagine if you go into a hotel and Be My Eyes tells you that the reception desk is over there and now you say to glide, okay, I want to go to that reception desk. And glide takes you there. So, you can start to see how these combinations start to work together. Okay. And that's connecting to the physical device through, let's say, your phone and things like that? Probably, yes. Again, it depends what runs on the device and what runs on the phone. We can see a combination where some of these capabilities glide will provide straight out of the device and you can communicate with voice. Okay. Like, find the reception desk or what's around, you know, what's in front of me. Those kind of questions and glide can communicate with you. So, that voice-based interaction. But sometimes you just want to, you know, use an app on your phone to do that and then glide just takes you there. So, I think we're looking at both of those possible ways of doing it. Okay. And I say that because I think it's very important that I want to build the best mobility aid, right, that you guys would love using everywhere you go. Like, that it feels great, that it works great. But I need the ecosystem to build those more specialized experiences in the places and scenarios that you're going to find yourself in. Right, right, right. You had something, Pedro? I'm sorry. Sorry, Pedro, yeah. No, yeah. I know you were mentioning, like, navigating within Target or a department store. You guys are working with these companies or the device has its own system to navigate within department stores or malls and places like that? So, yes to both. So, we are working with different, you know, we are starting to work with organization companies to really think about what does it mean for you to make your space more accessible and inclusive by enabling Glide to operate in that space effectively. Yeah, I mean, I think the airport is probably the easiest scenario for us all to imagine, right? Coming off the Uber and walking across the airport through security to the gate. Exactly. Yeah. But to do that, there needs to be some collaboration with the airport in order to make sure that we get you to the right security line and that we get you, yeah? Yes. So, that's one thing. The other thing is the freestyling. I think it's very important that people are able to freestyle indoors and outdoors, and that's where we try to do as much as we can with what we can handle ourselves. So, basically, you know, having the camera, having data, having GPS, having the radars on the device, you can navigate. Like, you can walk through an airport, find an escalator, get onto that escalator safely, get off that escalator, go to the next. You know, if you have a rough idea of where you're going, Glide can help you with the rest. So, it's a combination, yeah? Sometimes full, tied-down routes that the organization or that venue supports, and sometimes you're freestyling, but getting a lot of information. Because Glide can speak to you. Glide can describe to you what's going on. Maybe you want to pull in Aira, right, and see if, you know, at some point an agent wants to help you as well, and then you continue. So, I think there's various combinations here that we could look at. Yeah, I see that. I see that. All those options, more options means more opportunity to navigate our surroundings at a confident level at that. And I want to go back to the goal, right? Bring many, many more people with sight loss out and about. Right. Yeah. I mean, this is expanding the horizons. I mean, again, myself, I mean, I'm out and about. I love to get out. I get on a train. I go, you know, San Bernardino and L.A., move around in L.A., all these various things. It's just when I'm going to unfamiliar areas, that's my biggest hang-up, you know, just navigating something that I'm not familiar with. Yeah. Unfamiliar intersections, unfamiliar roads, unfamiliar, you know, you get off. You try to go to a new building somewhere or, yeah. Exactly. And I'm looking at, like, what we've been playing with lately is, again, the new VoiceVista, which is, again, built on the, you know, the Soundscape platform, right? Mm-hmm. You can literally plot a route with that. Yeah. And imagine that you plot the route with VoiceVista, and now Glide helps you to get through that space. So if you're going through an intersection that you've not done before, yeah, and VoiceVista tells you that you need to get to the other side of that intersection somehow, and Glide can see the environment. It's got its cameras. It's got its sensors and everything and help you get across that intersection so you can continue on that route and take you, yeah, keep you on that path. That's what I'm looking for, Amos. That's exactly what I'm looking for. That's what we're working on. Now, does this, does it recognize curb cutouts? Yes. Okay. So in other words, if we're crossing an intersection, crossing the crosswalk, it'll guide us to the cutout to where we can just go right up the cutout. Yeah. So I want to also, this is a great question because as an engineer and a researcher, I always kind of think about these things in the long term. The pedestrian environment is a very complex environment for people and for machines to get around. Yeah. Roads at least have rules and lanes and, yeah. On the other hand, the pedestrian environment is very open. You know, there are less rules. You can do quite a lot there, yeah. So one of the things that we're working on is, think about it in the Tesla model, right, where glide gets better over time at dealing with more and more complex situations. And you get over-the-air updates to your glide as more and more people use it and as it sort of matures over the, over its early days, shall we call it. Yeah. So I could imagine a situation, you know, curb cuts are, you know, most doors are outdoors, right? We know what the door is. There are exceptions. Some doors are a little bit crazy. But there's lots of different kinds of curb cuts, you know. Different countries have very different kinds of curb cuts. Different cities have different kinds of curb cuts. Some intersections have the curb cuts in the wrong place or they look in the wrong, yeah, or they don't have them at all or, yeah. It happens even here. Eh? It happens even here. Absolutely. I mean, I was on a, I think, you know, we all know these crazy curb cuts where the curb cut is actually facing the middle of the intersection instead of the other side of the road. Exactly. Right? And you have to kind of step in, do a 45-degree turn, go across the road, look for that other end, and you may end up going up the road of the opposite, you know, traffic if you're not careful. You may not find that other curb cut, right? Right, right, right. And so those are the kind of situations that we really need to train Glide on to get better and better at accomplishing. And I think that we will see. We will see progression, yeah, as Glide learns to deal with more and more complex environments. So on that note, Amos, will the AI that's in Glide, right, it does have AI in it, correct? Correct, yes. Okay, so it's going to constantly update, or I should say upload information to your database, so it's basically teaching each unit? Not necessarily. I mean, I'll try to kind of break it down for you, but when we learn about more and more complex situations, there's different ways that we can train the AI to deal with those situations. A lot of that is done in simulation, where you present a simulated version of Glide with more and more complex environments. And somebody tells us, hey, you know, this intersection has this weird thing here, so we present that to Glide and to the simulation. So we don't need to necessarily grab user data in order to train the AI models, but then everybody gets that trained update so that you can benefit from it. The other part of the AI is what is more the personalized experience, where, you know, for Ed, as a guide, I need to always give a little bit of extra space on the right, because he seems to be bumping his shoulder there all the time, right? Or, you know, deal with speeds in different ways. So there's the personalization aspect of the machine learning that we definitely want the device to learn from your behaviors and do the best it can in your situation. Those are two different aspects of learning and getting familiar with and better at the routes and the environments that you do on a regular basis. Okay. I had a question about the handle. Is the handle able to customize for a taller or shorter person? That's a great question. Yes. It's a telescopic handle. Okay. And you do need to set it to the length that's appropriate for your height, and that's something that we show people how to do when they get the device. Because you want it to – yeah, it's important that it's – yeah, you can imagine for yourself why that's important. So the length of the handle. We also are working to make the device very portable. So, you know, as a mobility aid, we don't want you to be dragging around something that you don't know what to do with. You know what I mean? Yeah? So, you know, making sure that it snaps for – that you can fold it up when you get into a car, just get it between your feet. Or when you go onto a bus, onto a plane, either put it under the seat in front of you or on the overhead compartment. So these requirements, and we're also making sure that the device is not going to be too heavy. So our current target weight is five pounds. Okay. So it's – you know, you can pick it up fairly easily and, you know, tuck it, put it away, or just hold it in your hand. Yeah, go ahead. I guess that kind of brings me to a comment from – a question from the comment over here. How would we get it up and downstairs or something like that? That's a great question. So it is a wheeled device. It doesn't climb stairs. It can roll downstairs. So the wheels are big enough so that you – but I wouldn't use it to navigate downstairs. At least not – I don't envisage that navigating downstairs is going to be a day one feature. So what the device will do is it will steer you to the top of the stairs. If it can detect the rail, it will tell you where the rail is. It will tell you, you know, steps going down, rail on the right. And it will apply the brakes. So at that point, you hold onto the rail. You basically pick up the device or roll it down if you prefer, and then continue once you get to the bottom. And vice versa when you go upstairs. Now, that is a – you know, we have talked about it a lot in the company about how to address that and what are the tradeoffs here. Really, our goal at this stage is to get going and get the device out there and get it used. And if in two years' time everybody feels that this needs to climb stairs, we'll work on that problem. In most cases, there are alternative routes as well. And also, we haven't talked yet about pricing, but it's very important for us that if this is going to become a device that brings many, many more people out and about, it has to be something that most people should be able to afford. Thank you for that one. I really appreciate that aspect of it. Well, it all is part of the formula, right? I mean, if you – or part of the equation, right? If it's not – I've been in this field long enough, Ed, to kind of – and, you know, we get a lot of feedback from a lot of folks. And I think that's important. We are currently working on – we'll be talking about pricing in a couple of months' time once we start to take pre-orders. But if you want a range just to kind of keep it in your mind, think about what it costs to own a cell phone, you know? Okay, okay. So that's sort of the range. It comes with some kind of an initial purchase of the device. There may be various service packs depending on the level of capability that you need from the device. If you really are a beginner and you need just a couple of routes in your immediate neighborhood, that might be one thing. And if you're traveling the world and going to airports and hotels and different cities all the time, that might be another thing. But we are still exploring that. Okay. But that's kind of to give you a flavor of the pricing and how we're thinking about it in order to get it to us. But then going back to the climbing stairs question, if we build a device that climbs stairs, it would be 10 times more expensive. So now you decide, you know, is it worth 10 times more expensive and more complex device, or is it okay that you just pick it up and walk up the stairs? At this stage, I think that we chose to take the latter. So let's say I'm navigating a curve and the device stops. So to feel the curve, I would have to use my foot. But I was thinking this device coincides with the cane. So let's say we reach the stairs and I want to reach with my cane instead of my foot, just to touch and feel the stairs. Okay, they're coming up. Let me pick up the device, walk down, then probably put my cane up for those little tasks that I would have to do, pull out my cane and feel the curve and stuff like that. And another question about the device, does it have any safety tape that the cane has that glows to warn drivers and warn pedestrians that it's a device that's guiding someone? Anything like that on the device? I love your questions, Peter. Now you're getting into what it means to bring a new mobility aid, and how does it work with other things that we do, and how does it work with the public, right? Correct. And I wouldn't say that we have all the answers, and that is really the reason that we are developing it out in the open with the community, because I think that devices like this are going to be part of our world. If you imagine five, seven years out, we'll see many people out and about, many more blind people out and about, and some will be using canes and dogs, and others will be using glides or other intelligent guides. And we have to figure out the answers to some of these questions, especially how do other people know what's going on here, yeah? Right. What does O&M training look like? Do we train people with these devices? What happens if they order it on Amazon and they go off by themselves? All kinds of questions that I think we have to start grappling with. I definitely envisage it used with a cane if people like to. It's not that you tap around with the cane in the same way that you navigate with a cane, but if you want to have a cane in your other hand to kind of check something, that's entirely possible. And if you get to the point that you just want to use glide by itself, that's also fine. And I see the great uses, popping out a little cane just to see the curve, make sure everything is right, you're lined up right, and the device could guide you to the other corner and all that, and by then you will put your cane away and stuff like that. Sometimes you may do need to indicate to a person that you're blind and might need to show your cane. They might not understand the device yet. They might not have come across the device. That's what I'm saying. Especially in the early days, right? Exactly. Especially. Especially. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And for battery use, one thing, I know it's still on production in beta form, but I wonder if you all considered extra battery or is it like a charger you may have to carry and you could just plug in real fast to the wall when you're at a location or things like that. You all haven't got to the battery type aspect of the device? Yeah. Again, great points. I told you Pedro was that guy. He was going to hit himself with it. He is. He is. No, these are the points that are going to matter, right? When you want to step out of your house, you want to know that you're not going to run out of battery, right? It's like electric vehicles, right? Am I going to be able to get there before it runs out? So based on all our measurements to date, it really is an all-day use device. We were at CSUN, the Assistive Technology Conference, last week. Right. I was just there and I didn't run into you guys. I'm sad that I missed it. I'm sorry. Were you there? Yes. Both of us. We were both there. You were both there. Yeah, we couldn't find your booth. Again, being blind and, to me, the place is unorganized. I know. Trying to find anything, you know, but we did miss you. It was actually one of our listeners that found your booth and put you guys in contact with us. Oh, fantastic. I'm also signed up to your newsletter and your webinars you guys do. I've been signed up for the program. I've been keeping an eye out on you guys. You know, I came across the device and what it can do. I've been seeing the videos I put on, like the one that we showed earlier. For those that would like to see that video, again, it's on YouTube. Search for the Glidance and Glide device. And sign up for their newsletter to keep up to date when the device might be coming to the market, to keep up to date with their webinars, to join them and their webinars. If you have any questions like that, the link is in the description for those that would like to subscribe and sign up for their newsletter. Right. Thank you. Glidance.io. It's like the word guidance but with an L. G-L-I-D-A-N-C-E dot I-O. Pedro, thank you for bringing that up. Definitely, we love and invite and encourage people to join our monthly Zoom meetup. Allison here organizes them, and they've been a really great place for the community to engage on a lot of these questions. People who you get continuous updates on the development, and we'll also be soon talking about when we're going to start to take preorders for the device, which we hope to get to the point that we hope to get to beta devices later in this year, so by the fall. Don't hold me to it, but that's our sort of timeframe. And the preorder devices should start to ship in the first half of 2025, if all being well. But that's really our current timeframe. But this conversation spawned off our question about batteries, for some reason. So let me just close that one off, and we can come back to the thing. Just on the batteries, like I said, all they use is the goal. You can charge it with a regular USB-C connection. And we have had quite a few people who said it's really important to have the ability to swap the battery if you're going to places where there's not going to be a chance to charge it. So that's something that we are looking at from an industrial design perspective. At the same time, we want to make sure that it's water-resistant and a device that you can use in the rain and in harsh weather conditions. So there are things that we need to work on to make that possible. Yes, staying within that point, that is true. Swapping out a battery and having little open edges for it not being water-resistant, especially on a battery. So swapping out a battery might be a little tough. What about, let's say you said USB-C charging? If we're able to charge it with a fast charger, it would probably be a thing to do, right? To charge it rapidly so that the device stays charged instead of swapping out a battery and making it less rain-resistant. Right, so you mean carry a fast charger with you and then use that to juice up the glide. Yes, that could also be an option. Thank you for bringing that up. I'm a techie, so I have all kinds of ideas. Bring them on, man. For the AI sensor, I know you said that it optically sees the scene, and I know you have other sensors. I know the sensors are going to get better and better, but I know for a LiDAR sensor on an iPhone, it's around 15 feet. The sensor on the device could see further than 15 feet, probably like to 30 yards in case it needs to visualize the scene. Yeah, we definitely have a bigger and more capable camera on the device, and also the additional sensors that give us other depth inputs. We also have to make sure that it works in a variety of lighting conditions. Weather conditions, rain, snow. Lighting conditions is a really tricky one, for example. Yeah, that was my next question right there. That's why we have to have multiple sensors to deal with different situations. The radars that we use are not dependent on lighting at all, so they're very good from a safety perspective. Yeah, that you don't have anything that... Lighting is also darkness, but also sunlight can really... Yes, especially walking towards the sun at a sunset can really hinder the device. And the radars work on different frequencies so that they don't get affected by that. So those are absolutely things that we're looking at. Okay. Again, we will be clearer on the sort of... Details. Specs, if you like, or the boundaries of capability as we get nearer to the first version, based on the technologies that we will put on the device for the first version. But all of these points are well taken. Well, no. I mean, we appreciate you just being honest about the fact that, again, it is still in development. You're trying to get to that beta stage. And you want feedback from us in order to get there. So we have a preliminary device that's going to be predominantly what people want as we move forward. And then we can just make minor improvements moving forward from there. Yeah, exactly. And an affordable device also... And also get people starting to think about how it's... Like orientation and mobility training. How does it fit into orientation and mobility training? How do we... You know, I had a really interesting... Alison and I received an email just yesterday. One of the things that we currently do with the device is we have a remote control for the device to... Basically to control the device when we want to try out new things or try out different situations, but maybe not programmed in yet. We can sort of drive it with a remote control. Which is not part of the end product, right? I mean, the end product is not going to have a remote control. Well, an O&M wrote in and said, Well, you know, O&Ms might like that remote control, right? To be able to sort of control the device when they first train somebody on it, which is exactly what we do today when we do user studies. You know, before we set somebody off to go running around, we first put the device in controller mode so that we can guide the person, show them exactly how it feels when it turns left, when it turns right, when it brakes, and so on. And that, you know... So, all of a sudden, we're hearing from the community, Hold on, that's an important feature for us as well. We want to be able to control the device when people are running. Good point, right? Yeah. Sounds promising. The device sounds really promising. And the device looks like it can help all types of range people, from their beginner mobility to advanced mobility users, even for somebody that wants to have that freedom, you know, that wants to live their life the way they want, want to travel, want to go out and shop, want to go get their wife a surprise present, they can just pick up and go. Sounds promising. Ed? I mean, my thing would be, you know, on that level, I would address it just like we do regular mobility. Before you get a guide dog, you've got to have good cane skills, because ultimately, you know, just accepting the fact that this is new technology, technology will always have a possibility of breaking down, and you need to have that cane skills to be able to get home, just in case. You know, so... Go ahead. 100%. I want you to do your thing now and get everybody on the call to go and sign up to, on our website, Guidance.io, so that we can communicate. Yes, we have posted it here in the comments, I posted it in the group, I shared the post on my page. It's everywhere. We're going to do everything we can, Amos, to get people to sign up, and we're going to follow along with you and just know you have an open invitation to come back anytime you wish and keep us updated on what's new, what's going on, and get more feedback if that would help you. You know, we want to be here for you as well. Thank you. I'm also here if you need some feedback from me, I'll go look. I think this advice could be promising, straight out. This advice could be promising for the community. One thing I want you to think about, Amos, just in case you haven't thought about this part of it, I don't carry a white cane with a red tip. I get my canes from a gentleman back east that makes canes called custom canes. So all my stuff is kind of custom, so I'm kind of, you know, vain when it comes to my cane, if you will. So you want to be able to decorate your glide, right? There's the question. There it goes right there. I mean, whether it's decorated or not, I mean, I'm thinking here in my head, I'm thinking, okay, man, this would be great, but like a Ferrari front end on it with some headlights and, you know. He wants a Rolls Royce. Why not? You know what I'm saying? I mean, you know. Absolutely. You got it. We'll make those options available. Thank you. Actually, that's exactly what my co-founder, who's the industrial designer instead of designing the device, that's exactly what I'm thinking. Okay, okay, okay. Well, hey, I guess great minds think alike, right? Absolutely, yeah. Gina, who's also an influencer, she wants to dress hers like a giraffe. So, okay, if you want to. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So, I mean, again, Amos, again, I really appreciate you for coming on. And, again, just know we're here whenever you would like to come back on and give us an update. You're more than welcome. We are signed up. We will continue to follow along. And, man, I can't wait for this thing to hit the market. I can't wait for beta to come. I would love to get my hands on one of these things and take it on a test drive. And, man, so, again, I appreciate you, my brother. And I appreciate everything you're doing to try to help our community. Thank you for the opportunity. No problem. All right. No problem. On that note, everybody, I hope you enjoyed today's stream. And, again, go get signed up with Glidus and keep up to date with what's going on with Amos and the Glide. And we'll see you guys on Monday. Have a great day.
