Cast into a world of darkness, both humans and stick figures alike can be plagued with the disability known as blindness. The inability to see is not only no fun, but it’s terribly dangerous if you happen to be a loner. Tripping hazards and even other people become obstacles for you to navigate using nothing but your other senses. Well, most likely not taste, unless you are constantly licking people for identification purposes.

Philips has filed a sparsely designed patent for a really cool pair of specs made for giving some sort of sight to the blind. These spectacles for the visually-impaired provides auditory cues when a tripping hazard comes into view. While similar ideas have been played around with before, Philips has spurned the competition with a few special features, and no, it doesn’t include a hidden beer bong.

The Philips device adds the ability to track not only stationary objects, but moving targets as well. The specs include a combination of a camera, accelerometers, and a computer which helps track which objects are moving and which are planted in place.

And as the patent image clearly shows, these glasses even keep stick figures safe from the hazards of moving geometric cubes. So we can only imagine it does the same for humans. The fine stick figure scientists over at Philips have created a form of sight through sound, which is more advanced than previous methods.

Patent via Gearlog