DotLumen’s haptic headset could help blind people navigate

DotLumen founder Cornel Amariei describes his product as a “self driving” system to enable blind and low-vision people a way to get around. It’s essentially the electronic equivalent to a guide dog, helping users avoid obstacles when walking around. The Romanian company turned up to CES 2025 in Las Vegas armed with prototypes of its headset that it hopes will make blind people’s lives a lot easier.

The headset looks like a chunky piece of VR gear, with a front unit sitting on your forehead just above your eyes. There’s a chunky power and processing pack on the rear that keeps the bulky device's weight balanced while walking around. In the front, there are six computer vision cameras — three near field and three pointed further away — which Amariei says was inspired by Tesla’s setup.

Collision avoidance is the main priority here, preventing you from bumping into other pedestrians or street obstacles. In front of the headset are a series of little arms that make contact with your forehead, each one tied to a vibrating motor. When the vibrations are in the center of your forehead, it’s safe for you to move forward, but when the vibrations move either side, you should turn to refocus.

There is also a voice guide, and this will chime in to let you know when the view in front of you is getting crowded. Amariei told me that the headset has a battery life of around 2.5 hours, which is more than enough for an average walk. But that if you do need some extra juice, you can hook up a USB-C battery pack and carry that around with you as well.

Daniel Cooper for Engadget

Testing the headset in the less-than-ideal environment of CES was a great way way to see how serious the company is. After all, the ceilings are low, the walkways narrow and there are always hundreds of people who just walk at you, expecting you to throw yourself out of their way. Which is why I wore a blindfold and strapped the prototype to my head in order to roam the floor at Eureka Park.

It’s obviously quite hard to describe the sensation navigating a space using only gentle taps on your forehead. I certainly was quite hesitant, taking small steps and slowly moving forward, letting the headset guide me on my journey through. When crowds thronged past me in tight formation, the hardware’s audio guide said “narrow,” telling me the space around me was in short supply.

What impressed me is that I was able to navigate the scrum without bumping into anyone, and managed to get a fair way through the hall. Naturally, I can’t speak to the headset’s long-term effectiveness, especially as someone who can see, but the technology certainly feels like it could be very useful.

Amariei said DotLumen will begin selling its headset in Europe in the near future, with the price expected to come in under €10,000. As steep as that sounds, he added the price to train a guide dog is significantly higher. In the US, the Guide Dog foundation says it costs $50,000 to breed, raise, train and place an assistance dog.

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