ASSISTIVE& WELLNESS

Ximira PHINIX

PRICE TBC AVAILABLE TBC

Some of the most exciting uses of AI and machine vision is in the area of support for people living with disabilities such as blindness. Ximira is working on a platform called PHINIX (Perceptive Helper with Intelligent Navigation and Intuitive eXperience), which currently looks like an enhanced backpack.

A Framework laptop motherboard and storage sit inside, wrapped in a plastic case, with cameras mounted on the backpack’s straps plus headphones for the wearer. PHINIX uses AI to recognise the scene around the user and to describe it clearly – alerting you to pedestrians and street furniture, for example – and it can also use facial recognition to identify nearby friends. It’s early days for this project, but the potential is significant. Jon Honeyball

Baracoda BMind

PRICE TBC AVAILABLE TBC

Looking like something straight out of a sci-fi movie, the BMind smart mirror could well be a glimpse into the bathrooms of the future. Powered by generative AI, it offers personalised recommendations based on your mental state, all read by a built-in camera that can read facial expressions (and remember individuals, to keep user history private).

For example, by sensing that you’re feeling down, it can use a series of light therapy techniques or run suitable mindfulness exercises – all provided through Baracoda’s CareOS interface and programs from ThrivePal. It can also offer physical assistance with tools such as guided toothbrush coaching, while skin analysis means it can make recommendations for how to, say, reduce redness in your face (or increase it, should you be looking Snow White). If it works as well as BMind claims, it could prove to be the next step in the evolution of virtual assistants. And hopefully not the start of an episode of Black Mirror. Rowan Campbell

Withings BeamO

PRICE $449 AVAILABLE H1 2024

The Withings BeamO is a one-device medical check-up. About the size of an Apple TV remote, it can measure your body temperature, your blood oxygen level, provide a “medical-grade” electrocardiogram to check for heart abnormalities, and includes a digital stethoscope for listening to the heart and lungs. Withings reps claimed it would be easy to share all this captured data with your doctor, although we doubt many GPs are suitably equipped to take its live readings. Still, it can generate a PDF of your recent metrics, if you need to give the doc a less high-tech readout of your results. The $449 price tag shouldn’t induce a heart attack, either. Barry Collins

EssilorLuxottica Nuance Audio

PRICE N/A AVAILABLE H2 2024

EssilorLuxottica is a big name (in every way) in eyecare, owning a retail network of 18,000 stores across 150 countries. Last year it snapped up Nuance Hearing, and this is the result: a pair of glasses developed to help those with “mild or moderate hearing loss”. Say you’re in a restaurant: the front-mounted cameras will detect who you’re looking at, with the Nuance-developed algorithms then amplifying and enhancing the speaker’s voice. The result is discreetly beamed straight into your ears via speakers mounted into the stems. It’s a clever concept, and it did work when I tried them on in the demo, but I would warn against expecting miracles. But you can try them for yourself later this year. Tim Danton