DotLumen founder Cornel Amariei describes his product as a “self driving” system to enable blind and low vision people to get around. It is essentially the electronic equivalent of a guide dog, helping users avoid obstacles when walking. The Romanian company arrived at CES 2025 in Las Vegas armed with prototypes of its headset that it hopes will make life easier for the blind.

The headset looks like a chunky piece of VR gear, with the front unit sitting on your forehead above your eyes. There is a chunky power and processing pack on the back that keeps the weight of the large device balanced while walking. Up front, there are six computer vision cameras — three near-field and three focused at a distance — that Amariei says was inspired by Tesla’s setup.

Collision avoidance is the main priority here, preventing you from crashing into other pedestrians or road obstacles. On the front of the headset are a series of small arms that contact your forehead, each one tied to a vibrating motor. If the vibrations are in the middle of your forehead, it is safe for you to move forward, but if the vibrations move to either side, you should return the focus.

There is also a voice guide, and it sounds to let you know if the view in front of you is crowded. Amariei told me the headset has a battery life of around 2.5 hours, which is more than enough for the average walk. But if you need more juice, you can hook up a USB-C battery pack and take that with you, too.

Testing the headset in the less-than-ideal environment of CES is a great way to see how serious the company is. After all, the ceilings are low, the aisles are narrow and there are always hundreds of people just walking past you, expecting you to throw yourself out of their way. So I put on a blindfold and strapped the prototype to my head to roam the floor of Eureka Park.

Apparently it’s hard to describe the sensation of navigating a space using only gentle taps on your forehead. I definitely hesitated, took small steps and continued slowly, letting the headset guide me on my journey. As the crowds crowded around me in tight formation, the audio guide on the hardware said “narrow,” telling me that the space around me was lacking.

What impressed me was that I was able to navigate the scrum without bumping into anyone, and was able to make a fair way down the hall. Of course, I can’t speak to the long-term effectiveness of the headset, especially for someone who can see, but the technology definitely feels like it will be very useful.

Amariei said DotLumen will start selling its headset in Europe in the near future, with the price expected to come below €10,000. As steep as that is, he adds the price of training a guide dog is much higher. on US, the foundation of Guide Dog says it costs $50,000 to breed, raise, train and place an assistance dog.