Romanian startup .lumen signs agreement with US giant Arrow Electronics
The Romanian startup .lumen will scale the production of its smart guidance glasses with the support of the American giant Arrow Electronics, a global supplier of technological solutions, now at its second collaboration with a company from Romania.
Arrow will provide .lumen with full engineering and supply chain services to enable the Romanian company to efficiently expand its production. The Colorado-based company will handle the identification, sourcing, and integration of the electronic components required for the production of the device, such as processors, cameras, sensors, and connectors.
Arrow, which had revenue of USD 28 billion in 2024, will also support .lumen through inventory reliability, cost control, and improved performance of the complex technology developed by .lumen.
“We are helping to create a device which eventually will make life better for millions of people affected by blindness worldwide,” said Vitali Damasevich, Arrow’s regional director of engineering in Eastern Europe, cited in the press release.
.lumen’s Glasses for the Blind replicate the essential functions of a guide dog by combining artificial intelligence (AI), six integrated cameras, and real-time haptic feedback on a single wearable headset. The glasses continuously scan and understand the environment in real time, detecting obstacles, identifying safe paths, and guiding the user with gentle directional vibrations.
“Growing up in a family where everyone except me had a disability, I realized how much technology can help people with disabilities, but also how rarely it is designed for people with disabilities. I founded .lumen to solve this problem,” said Cornel Amariei, founder and CEO of .lumen.
The glasses, which can be reserved now for EUR 10,000, “do everything that an autonomous car does, but on the pedestrian side. The best thing is that this technology does not require any modification of the infrastructure,” Amariei explained.
The .lumen device has obtained the necessary certifications for commercialization in Europe and will be launched initially in Romania.
In July last year, Arrow and the Dutch chip manufacturer NXP Semiconductors signed a partnership with the Romanian lithium-ion battery manufacturer Prime Batteries Technology to launch a next-generation platform of battery energy storage systems (or BESS).
(Photo source: dotlumen.com)
