Corbeau – Corbeau Innovation

Jul 26 2024

Hear more from microLED displays!

Last week someone asked Corbeau, ‘So what’s happening in the world of microLED displays?’ After the US launch of Apple’s new Vision Pro 2 mixed reality headset back in February this year, it’s a good question to ask.

The answer is that the Metaverse is a bit flat. Tim Cook’s company’s first major new product in ten years was a jaw-dropping piece of tech, with 3D imaging and gesture control. Offering totally or partially immersive user experiences for work and play, Apple devotees placed around 160,000 advanced orders for the Vision Pro. Wider take-up has been slow. Why? The $3.5k price tag could be one reason but the real issue is that whereas Steve Jobs’ iPhone connected people, Tim Cook’s Vision Pro simply doesn’t. A user hides behind giant ski-goggles displaying a false image of their own eyes. Friends or colleagues in the same room are left to wonder what their isolating buddies are looking at or listening to.

Like Moses coming down from mount Sinai, Vision Pro users might well have experienced a mighty revelation but they struggle to share it with lesser mortals.

What’s new?

Augmented Reality company Vuzix has partnered with Boston start-up Xander to make it a whole lot easier to share mighty revelations and more mundane messages. Xander’s goal is to help people with hearing loss understand their friends and work colleagues. Their technology is a brilliant alternative to conventional hearing aids. Xander have adapted Vuzix AR glasses to display words spoken by people talking to you. No smartphone tethering required, just pop them on and read what folk say to you.

Solution for a problem

Anyone with conventional hearing aids will tell you how they can transform your life but at the same time how frustrating they are to use. Frequent complaints are that batteries are fiddly to insert and that in-ear plugs get uncomfortable or itchy, which means older people with loss of hearing tend to use them infrequently. A growing body of research is showing that social isolation in older people leads not only to loneliness but also cognitive decline and neurodegenerative diseases.

Technical details

Xander hearing glasses are based on Vuzix’s Shield augmented reality glasses. Vuzix produce a range of AR glasses, targeted at specific groups of users. For example engineers needing to read an instruction manual while wielding a wrench or pharmacists who must dispense and check formulations and counter-indications at the same time. This has set them apart from big tech behemoths like Apple and Meta who have chosen to develop products for the masses. Vuzix produces products for the niches.

Xander glasses have a speech recognition engine powered by a built-in microprocessor and battery power, making them independent of phones and wifi reception. Monochrome text is displayed in front of users eyes using Vuzix’s proprietary waveguide technology and 1 micron pitch microLED array device chip. Xander claims greater than 90% accuracy for its speech recognition.

Market needs

Paul Travers, CEO of Vuzix, explains that both Vuzix and Xander have similar business models: to use technology to meet the real-life needs of their customers.

In fact Xander has made a point of beta testing with groups of users with hearing loss, including the US Veterans Association. A product video shows a slightly sceptical looking Vet about to put on Xander glasses for the first time and then his smiling face as he gives his feedback.

Hearing loss is a big issue, something like 48 million people in the USA experience hearing loss and everyone can expect to experience some loss after the age of 40.

At $3-4k, Xander glasses are in the same price bracket as Apple’s Vision Pro. Expensive for sure but very comparable with top-end conventional hearing aids.

Future prospects

Will Xander become a $billion business? Only time will tell but the needs of a huge global market are currently served by an unsatisfactory competing technology. If Xander and Vuzix can work together to drive economies of scale and find appropriate distribution partners, we could be hearing a lot more from them.

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Sep 22 2020

Identification of Xylella fastidiosa disease in olive trees by multispectral imaging

Humans are not the only species susceptible to bugs from foreign shores. Olive trees in Italy are falling prey to a nasty bacterium, Xylella fastidiosa, that has hitched a ride on unwanted migrants. In this case the migrants were insects on plants originating from the Americas. X. fastidiosa causes Olive Quick Decline Syndrome (OQDS) and affects not only olive trees but also grape vines and citrus trees.

The problem requires urgent action, with 100,000’s of trees in southern Italy affected and the disease spreading elsewhere in southern Europe. There is no cure. Early detection and attack against the insect vectors is the best course of action. Unfortunately the quick decline of infected trees means that action can be too late to save the trees or contain the spread of the disease. According to the European Commission it is one of the most dangerous plant diseases in the world today.

As in the struggle against COVID-19, scientists have invented sensitive PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) tests for the disease but they are rather slow and require adequate sampling. There are also much quicker biochemical (ELISA – Enzyme Linked Immuno-Sorption Assay) tests but these are not as robust. What to do?

A team at the Polytechnic University of Bari in Italy have developed a rapid non-invasive method using multispectral imaging with cameras carried aloft by drones. UAVs (Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles) are used to gather not just images of olive trees in conventional colour but in five chosen channels within the visible/near-infrared spectrum.

University of Bari drone (a) and camera payload (b) (image courtesy MDPI)

Writing recently in the journal Sensors, the Bari team carefully describe how drones were flown over healthy and diseased olive groves and the image data analysed. Conventional images of trees in the largely diseased grove (Squinzano) and healthy grove (San Vito dei Normanii) looked very similar. Multispectral images from San Vito dei Normanii are shown below.

Five spectral channel images of olive trees (image courtesy MDPI)

It is only when the angles, scales, sunlight illumination are all corrected for that the raw data can be analysed. Using a clever mathematical method know as linear determinant analysis (LDA), the Bari team were able to classify individual trees as healthy or diseased. They then used that classification to calculate a probability that each pixel in separate olive grove images was from a diseased tree.

Uninfected olive tree grove probability map (image courtesy MDPI)

Infected olive tree grove probability map (image courtesy MDPI)

It is immediately obvious from the heatmap probability images of the two olive groves above, which one is infected. The hot yellow colours of the lower image from Squinzano contrast strikingly with the cold dark tree areas of the image from San Vito dei Normanii. The Bari team calculated a 98% sensitivity and 100% precision for the multispectral imaging determination of diseased trees.

Although impressive, this Xylella Fastidiosa discrimination method still requires further development work to be useful in the fight against its spread in Europe. The methods used seem transferable to other olive groves and probably other species but they need to be tested against crops where the disease state is not know to the monitoring team beforehand. It also needs to be proved that the disease can be identified at an earlier stage than is possible with PCR or ELISA tests.

Just as we are finding with COVID-19, a clever test is only the first part of a potential solution. We still need effective test, trace and isolate actions as links in a strong chain to secure the unwanted gadabouts.

For more information read the full report on multispectral imaging of Xylella fastidiosa here.

European Commission advice on Xylella fastidiosa can be found here.

An EU video report on Xylella fastidiosa:

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