£1800 Smart Glasses with Facial Recognition Help Father Recognise Family Again

A father with a degenerative eye condition is finally able to recognise his family for the first time in 30 years due to clever technology in a pair of smart glasses.

Marc Bilton had to give up his job as a microbiologist and stop playing sports with his children after genetic condition Retinitis Pigmentosa left him blind.

After seeing a Facebook ad, Marc and his wife discovered OrCam glasses, clever spectacles with a tiny camera attached by a wire to a pocket computer. The camera is programmed to recognise faces and also read to him through a small speaker when he points his finger at text.

For Marc, it’s the facial recognition the smart glasses gives him that means the most, saying the frames give back ‘dignity’ when he talks to people. “It is just liberating that I don’t need to wait for people to say or I work out from the conversation I’m having who I’m talking to,” he says.

Around 200 people in the UK are now using the £1800 glasses.