CES 2026: Self-Driving Glasses for the Blind

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One of our most interesting finds at CES 2026 was a Romanian startup called .lumen, which has developed glasses for the blind. The company’s first-generation device has already secured 1,500 pre-orders, worth about $10 million. With production now ramping up, .lumen is simultaneously advancing work on a second-generation model.

There are two important aspects to this technology and product: One is the fact that there are some parallels—and significant differences—with ADAS technology development for the automotive environment. The second is that when you use it, once you get competent at understanding how to interpret the haptic signals it provides, the device has the potential to enhance mobility for people who are blind or have impaired vision.

Founder and CEO Cornel Amariei previously worked on AVs at Continental but decided to start .lumen in 2020 to do something for blind and visually impaired people. In our conversation with Amariei, we discovered not only his motivation for developing this technology but also the lessons learned from developing ADAS technologies for cars.

He told EE Times that while the technology developed for cars uses pre-defined mapping and roads with clear boundaries, this approach cannot be applied to pedestrians. “We need to understand the world in a semantic way,” he said, highlighting that the company uses stereo vision and AI models to continuously figure out the users’ position and the ground to ensure that they do not walk onto a lake just because it looks flat, for example.

In a video interview, we talk about .lumen’s progress, technology, funding, ambition, and vision, including plans for the next generation of glasses and other potential applications for this technology—such as robotics, which is going to be all the rage in 2026.

You can watch the full video interview, along with our trial of the glasses, below: