Spectacular invention to make every voice heard

Ren Yamin, an entrepreneur from Shanxi province, is using technology to make communication for the hearing-impaired easier than ever before.

Ren, who has been deaf since birth, has developed smart glasses which use artificial intelligence and cloud technology to translate voice into text and project it onto lenses.

The idea for the glasses first came to Ren while he was studying at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2005. However, it was not until after his studies that he could begin bringing his idea to life.

While working at a tech company called Integrine, Ren learned a great deal about cloud computing and AI technology. Upon leaving the company and establishing SeeingVoice, Ren launched a cloud platform based on AI and deep learning technologies in 2018 called 40DADOW.

The first product to use 40DADOW were the smart glasses Ren had thought about at university.

Ren said the hearing-aid technology based on the 40DADOW cloud platform has intellectual property rights, on which semantic recognition and acoustic models are stored and executed, and at the same time, automatic deep learning is applied.

"The cloud platform has good recognition and speech separation results by using large models, ultrahigh speed computing and other technologies," he said.

"All calculations and operations are executed in the cloud, which ensures that the product can quickly adapt to the hearing environment and offer an optimized solution," he added.

With money coming in from angle investors, Ren said the next stage for his company would be raw material procurement and expansion. A classmate from the University of Science and Technology of China, Zhou Hui, who works as a vice-president at a Fortune 500 company, has provided the parts to make the glasses.

At a recent event held in Toronto, Canada, all 100 of Ren's prototype glasses sold out. "It is my ultimate goal of realizing real-time recognition of Chinese language, though it is technically difficult. What I need is not wealth, but to help Chinese who can barely hear," Ren said.

Ren achieved more success after setting up his company Seeing-Voice in the Shanxi Transition and Comprehensive Reform Demonstration Zone in Taiyuan, capital of the province. The company began selling the smart glasses last June, and according to its development plan, production bases covering 5.33 hectares will be put into operation by the end of 2021.

In the next five years, Seeing-Voice will provide 500 jobs and is projected to generate 20 million yuan ($2.86 million) in tax revenue after 2023, local media reported.

"My mission is to make the world have no voice that cannot be heard," Ren said. "Next, we are looking to make visually impaired people see through listening."

Yang Yu contributed to this story.

yinruowei@chinadaily.com.cn