These new glasses can help you hear.
You read that right. Former Qualcomm engineers have invented smart glasses that can amplify the sounds you want to hear while reducing the background noise around you. Now the startup is recruiting San Diego-area participants to test its latest prototypes.
The San Diego company behind the glasses is Aynak, which means “eyeglasses” in Persian. CEO Ramesh Chandrasekhar founded the company two years ago after leaving Qualcomm, where he spent 26 years, serving as vice president of engineering.
Inside Aynak’s office, Chandrasekhar pushed aside scattered copper coils and an array of circuit boards. He held up the smart glasses and pointed to “the brains” inside the frame.
Each pair of glasses has a few microphones, a small camera, a circuit board, two speakers and a battery, all weighing under 42 grams.
“Every gram matters,” Chandrasekhar said.
By combining these components with artificial intelligence, the glasses can adapt to a particular environment.
The frames know who’s talking by scanning the faces of people in the room. Judging by the distance between people and the behaviour of the user, the glasses decide if it’s something the wearer wants to listen to.
If, for example, a user is at a coffee shop and the person next to them is talking, the glasses won’t amplify the conversation, because they know the person isn’t talking to the user.
The glasses work at a loud bar or even at your house watching TV, but the glasses don’t eradicate all noises around you.
“That would feel unnatural… People come to the bar because they like the ambience of the bar,” he said.
When asked if the glasses can be used to eavesdrop, Chandrasekhar laughed. “Not these ones,” he said, explaining that the glasses can only amplify sounds within a 2-metre radius, about 6.5 feet.
The glasses also come with an app the user can use to create a “hearing profile.” The glasses can test the ability of your ears, and if, for example, you have a hard time hearing a certain frequency, the glasses will automatically boost those sounds.
“This is kind of how hearing aids work. But we can’t call it a hearing aid because we don’t have FDA certification,” said Dan Luka, the chief operating officer and a Qualcomm veteran of more than 17 years.
At least not yet. Once the prototype testing is done, the company plans to seek clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
If the glasses, which they plan to sell for US$700 (RM2,833), receive approval, they will be comparable to over-the-counter hearing aids.
Luka calls the glasses “grey tech” because they solve an obvious problem people face as they age.
But Chandrasekhar was quick to point out that one in eight people over 12 have hearing loss in both ears.
“It’s because of the higher use of personal audio devices,” he said. Even if young people don’t get a diagnosis, “they are more self-aware … these are the people who would use it contextually, just like you would use sunglasses for driving.”
The largest hurdle for commercialisation, though, is adoption. People logically assume camera-equipped glasses would compromise privacy.
The engineers outright named Meta’s smart glasses as an example of what wearers, and the people around them, worry about.
Anyak doesn’t store any audio or video information. All of the data is processed locally on the device, said Chandrasekhar.
Plus, camera footage is only good enough for a computer to tell there’s a face in front of it but not whose face it is, and it can’t be used to record. Chandrasekhar said that the device's local processing power keeps the glasses fast and secure.
If the trials go to plan, the engineers hope to bring the glasses to market in summer 2027. – The San Diego Union-Tribune/Tribune News Service
