Lunch & Learn with Speakaboo
On February 11, fifteen people attended the Lunch & Learn, eleven in person with four online. The speakers, Patrick Burton and Aaditya Vaze spoke about what led to the Founding of their company, BenVision. The idea was born out of the MIT Reality Hack 2023, where they, with their prototype, BEN, won the "Working Together for Inclusion and Equality" award. The idea is based on echolocation, where different objects will have different musical notes, so as you walk the musical notes, volumes will alert the user to the objects around them. Speakaboo was designed, initially, to work in conjunction with the original program, but then became a stand-alone product that was launched in 2024. Speakaboo functions similarly as Be My Eyes, but is entirely AI based.
Many members asked great questions, many of which had to do with smart glasses, and the pair were delighted to get user feedback. Finally, Patrick and Aadtiya spoke of their newest award-winning product, Viddyscribe. This won the “Google Gemini APT, Best Web App” award. Users can utilize this to add AI generated audio descriptions to videos.
A vegetarian chili and cornbread casserole were served for lunch.