Building technology that moves people, together with Arrow Electronics

📸 Scott Robinson, Arrow Electronics.

Some collaborations are built on specifications and timelines.

Others are built on a shared way of looking at the world.

Our collaboration with Arrow Electronics belongs to the second category.

From the beginning, this was never only about components, supply chains, or scaling production. Those things matter, deeply. But what brought us together was a common belief: that technology, when designed with care, can quietly restore freedom to people who have learned to navigate without it.

Where this story starts

.lumen began with a personal question. Growing up in a family where disability was part of everyday life, our founder Cornel Amariei saw both the promise of technology and how rarely it was designed for the people who needed it most.

Years later, that question became a product. The Glasses for the Blind are built to replicate the essential functions of a guide dog, using Pedestrian Autonomous Driving AI, real time perception, and intuitive haptic guidance. They understand the environment as it changes and guide the user safely through it, without relying on cloud connectivity or changes to existing infrastructure.

Being named a CES Innovation Award Honoree affirmed something we have believed from the start: that accessibility and advanced technology are not opposing goals. They belong together.

How it works, in everyday life

The Glasses continuously scan the surroundings and compute where it is safe to walk. They detect obstacles, interpret surfaces, and identify paths forward, hundreds of times per second.

Instead of overwhelming the user with sound or instructions, the device communicates through gentle vibrations on the user’s forehead. Gentle, consistent haptic signals guide movement, helping users avoid roads, puddles, uneven ground, or unexpected obstacles. The interaction is subtle and quickly becomes instinctive.

Everything runs locally on the device. This means ultra low latency, reliability, and the kind of responsiveness that allows people to trust the technology in real world situations. You know: busy sidewalks, crowded intersections, oe unfamiliar indoor spaces.

Powerful where it needs to be. Quiet where it should be.

The video created with Arrow shows something that is hard to explain in words: how the technology feels.

The ordinary joy of being out in the world. That is the measure we care about most.

How Arrow adds to the story

Scaling a product that people trust with their safety requires more than innovation. It requires discipline, precision, and partners who understand what it takes to move from prototype to everyday use.

Arrow brings exactly that.

Through engineering expertise and supply chain support, Arrow helps us transform a complex, high performance wearable into a product that can be manufactured at scale, consistently and responsibly. This collab allows us to focus on what we do best: refining the experience for blind users and ensuring the technology works where it matters most, in daily life.

A shared philosophy: Semi Autonomous Mobility (SAM)

What makes this collaboration especially meaningful is how naturally .lumen fits within Arrow’s broader Semi Autonomous Mobility initiative.

SAM is about supporting people. It’s about technology that augments human ability and restores agency, whether that means enabling a quadriplegic driver to race, helping someone walk again with an exoskeleton, or supporting independent movement without sight.

In this context, the .lumen Glasses extend the idea of semi autonomous mobility from vehicles and machines to human movement itself.

Same principle, new frontier.

Meet the people who shaped the product

Behind every feature and every design decision, there are people.

Andrea, Alex, Irina, and Silvia are, beyond testers, our collaborators, critics, and constant reminders of why this work matters.

Andrea has been with us since the very beginning. A journalist and radio host, she brings clarity and resilience to every test. Alex moves fast, literally and metaphorically. As an athlete training for the Paralympics, he pushes the boundaries of what mobility should feel like. Irina and Silvia, twins who lost their sight in their twenties, bring something equally important: a sense of normality and social life. Coffee, laughs, conversation.

They taught us that independence is not only about avoiding obstacles. It is about dignity, rhythm, and the confidence of joining the world without asking for permission.

If there is a School of Life lesson embedded in this work, it is this: freedom is often quiet. It shows up in small moments. In moving without hesitation. In trusting yourself again. In meeting someone halfway.

These people shaped the Glasses as much as any line of code ever did. We owe them more than thanks.

Looking ahead

Today, the Glasses have received all the medical device certifications required for commercialization in Europe, with an initial launch in Romania. As the software continues to evolve, new capabilities will extend this experience further, guided by the same principles that shaped it from the beginning: safety, clarity, and respect for how people perceive the world.

This technology is no longer an idea. It’s real. It’s being built. And it is being scaled together with Arrow.