Samsung has found another promising use for VR; helping to improve the vision of the visually impaired.
The company’s C-Lab initiative, which works on employee-generated ideas, has recently released Relumino, a visual aid application for the Gear VR. You might think that the millions of people around the world with visual impairment issues would have no use for a technology that relies so much on a user’s sight, but this new app proves otherwise.
Relumino works in tandem with the rear camera attached to Samsung’s Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, S8 and S8+ smartphones. It makes the images captured with the device visually-impaired-friendly by utilizing a range of features like magnifying and minimizing images, highlighting outlines, adjusting color contrasts and brightness, reversing color, and adding in screen color filtering.
It might be, for example, that you use the app to enlarge words in a real world book to make it easier to read. Those that suffer from tunnel vision, meanwhile, could have pictures rearranged to remap images to visible parts of the eye. Samsung itself says the app will be a “life-changer for 240 million of the visually impaired people around the world”. Note, however, that the app only works for those specifically with visual impairment issues, and can’t help those suffering from full blindness.
Interested in trying the app for yourself? Head to its official website for information on how to set it up. You’ll need the Oculus app and a verification code.
Samsung first showcased the application at Mobile World Congress back in February. The team behind it isn’t planning to stop with the app; it also envisions a glasses-like product that offers similar functions to the visually impaired.
