What is EchoSense? One wearable and one app for independence

EchoSense is an assistive-technology ecosystem built around one simple promise: powerful AI help that never sends a single byte of your conversations to the cloud. It consists of two products that share a philosophy but serve different communities.

Echo 1 — a navigation wearable for blind and visually impaired users

Echo 1 is a body-worn device that combines a wide-angle camera, a down-facing LiDAR, and GPS. It warns about obstacles, drop-offs and steps, answers spoken questions, reads text aloud, and gives turn-by-turn navigation using clock directions — all fully offline. Safety never depends on an AI model or a network connection.

EchoSense Companion — a calming AI for autistic users and their caregivers

The Companion app runs a multimodal AI named Echo directly on the user's iPhone. It reads Apple Watch vitals, learns personal preferences, and gently guides regulation before a difficult moment becomes a crisis. A consent-bounded dashboard keeps caregivers connected without taking control away from the user.

Why both, together?

Both products answer the same underlying problem: commercial assistive technology is either expensive, cloud-dependent, or both. EchoSense is built on commodity hardware — a Raspberry Pi 5 with a Hailo AI accelerator on the wearable, and the user's own iPhone for the app — which keeps the cost a fraction of comparable commercial aids.

• 0 bytes of conversation ever sent to the cloud
• 30 FPS on-device obstacle detection on the wearable
• 13 offline voice-assistant tools with zero cloud dependency
• 121 tests passing on real wearable hardware