Radical smart glasses screen crowd in bid to find missing children
A missing child is every parent’s worst nightmare, so a Greensborough father has developed a radical — but pricey — piece of technology he claims will help mums and dads spot kids “within seconds”. So how do they work?
South East
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A radical pair of “smart glasses” has been designed to scan crowds of people and spot missing children “within seconds”.
But founder Jerry Farsoun assured the “world-first technology” developed by Leelou would not operate like “Big Brother”, record footage or collect private data.
And they won’t come cheap - the retail price for one pair of glasses is $3000, while Mr Farsoun said it would cost $2200 until February 2020 for an “early-bird” pair.
The Greensborough father said a feeling of helplessness he experienced after his two-year-old son vanished among crowds at Federation Square two years ago sparked the innovative idea.
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A person’s profile is created through the free app, Leelou, and at the press of an SOS button audio, GPS coordinates are instantly streamed to a user’s nominated guardians and displayed on a dashboard.
Guardians wearing the glasses can then scan the crowd until the technology matches the missing profile to the correct person.
Whoever finds the missing person is then rewarded between 70 to 80 per cent of the $165 fee to create the profile on Leelou.
“The glasses act like a human eye — they scan crowds, screening for the missing person and providing personal safety during big, public gatherings,” Mr Farsoun said.
“We then reward users, a bit like Uber, to help locate missing children.”
Mr Farsoun said the glasses could also act like a phone where users watch Netflix, access Alexa and social media sites – and more than 150 other apps.
“This will go a long way to helping to enhancing Big Brother’s reputation when missing children are found, especially in public places,” he said.
“Instead of the whole process where someone describes the missing person’s features and what they’re wearing, all of that — this technology already has that information in its system and cuts straight to looking for the person.”
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Leelou is available on Apple and Google app stores, while glasses can be pre-ordered at leelouprivateeye.com.
Mr Farsoun said his team was ready to start delivering the glasses to customers.
“Like any new technology we’re going through that education process — but this is a world-first CCTV public platform and has the potential to cut the number of children reported missing each year in Australia.”