NewTech Friday: OOrion – Locating assistance for visually impaired individuals
Stéphanie Robieux, CEO of OOrion, tells us how the app was born during her engineering studies when she and co-founder Thomas Brisson met a visually impaired woman. OOrion, an AI-driven mobile app, helps users find and reach objects and text in their environment, serving over 4,000 users across 90+ countries..
Stéphanie Robieux, CEO of OOrion, tells us how the app was born during her engineering studies when she and co-founder Thomas Brisson met a visually impaired woman. OOrion, an AI-driven mobile app, helps users find and reach objects and text in their environment, serving over 4,000 users across 90+ countries. Future plans include expanding globally with translations in 30 languages, launching a paid version in 2024, and introducing a feature for user customization and object addition.
What led to the creation of OOrion?
OOrion was created while Thomas and I were still in our engineering studies. We had the chance to meet Christine, a visually impaired woman, during a HandiTech weekend. She shared a story with us about how, the previous day, she had spent over 10 minutes on the floor in her hallway after dropping her keys. Only to finally have to call her son for assistance to get back inside her home.
We realized that Christine's experience represented a real problem, a problem that 253 million individuals who suffer from visual impairments could have.
Combining our engineering skills with this important need we had identified, we came up with the idea for OOrion. After a significant amount of work, we were able to release the first prototype of the app in January 2022. The app received positive feedback and presented numerous opportunities for further development.
With this in mind, we embarked on the OOrion adventure!
Could you present OOrion's offer?
OOrion is a mobile application, downloadable on the App Store, developed using artificial intelligence algorithms that enable the identification, localization and guidance towards objects and text in the environment.
To go into more detail, our app offers several key features:
• The object search feature assists in locating specific objects that may have been misplaced in the environment. Once the app detects the object's location, the user is guided towards it through beeps and vibrations until the app signals that the object is within reach. Currently, the app recognizes around one hundred different objects.
• We quickly identified the impossibility of registering every existing object, which led us to develop a new feature, text search, allowing users to locate objects based on the text found on them. For example, it can identify the name of the brand of your toothpaste, a store sign or a street name.
• In addition to the object and text search, our app offers an environmental scanning feature. This allows users to identify all objects and texts in their surroundings. It is particularly valuable in unfamiliar environments, helping users in understanding what is around them.
Today, OOrion counts more than 4,000 users located in more than 90 countries around the world, and a faithful base of users can be observed.
What's coming next for OOrion?
We have several developments on the horizon...
In an effort to expand our reach globally, we have translated our app into 30 new languages. This new version is expected to be available on the App Store very soon, making the OOrion app accessible to an even bigger audience of visually impaired individuals.
On the economic front, we are currently preparing the launch of the paying version of OOrion planned for 2024.
Finally, we are hoping to introduce a new feature in the near future allowing everyone to personalize the app and add their own objects. We'll be able to provide more details on this by the end of 2023!
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