Instruments: Electronic vision

The OxSight Onyx is a camera system worn like spectacles that can capture the image being viewed in electronic form and then adapt it for easier viewing and interpretation. I was lucky enough to try out a prototype at the start of this year (figure 1) and was impressed by the way the unit could magnify an image by a simple press of a button, and also how it could be adapted to include a wide range of further functions, including facial (figure 2) and object recognition, text reading and bar code interpretation. As a prototype, my main concerns were about comfort and stability, but these have been addressed in the unit that is now commercially available (figure 3).