Seeing the light: smart glasses help boost sight of visually impaired

But for what he calls "super luck", Stephen Hicks could easily have found himself lugging plasma TV screens up the staircases of apartment buildings.

As it turned out, the Australian scientist, who was in need of money in 2007, landed a job that was the first step in the creation of elaborate "smart glasses", which have the potential of giving those with sight loss the chance to recognise everyday objects and people again.

The glasses use a combination of cameras to sense objects such as tables and walls as well as people, and then process that information into bright light on a screen. The person with impaired sight can use what is left of their vision to understand what is in front of them and navigate their surroundings.

Hicks and his colleagues at Britain's Oxford University recently won a £500,000 (HK$6.4 million) grant to expand the project and they will now create 100 pairs of the glasses to test on people with sight loss, in their homes. They aim to bring smart glasses to market at the end of next year.

It is the culmination of a life interest in neuroscience for Hicks, who was led back to his passion for investigating how technology and the brain can work together when researching Huntington's disease about seven years ago.

The latest prototype of his work uses two cameras and a laser to identify objects and then relay that information to a computer, which displays the objects on the glasses in very simplified form - detailed bright shapes. Users can see the objects using their residual vision, which typically is limited to perceptions of light and motion.

In effect, the wearer sees a reduced version of the world without colour, where objects that are closer are much brighter. When people, bus stops and cars are further away they get darker.