MakeSense, an EIC Accelerator Winner, Guides Blind Users by Touch

The white cane finds the kerb; it cannot say which way the station is. A London company founded out of Imperial College wants to close that gap with a handheld device whose dial physically points the user's hand in the direction to walk, using satellite positioning and a phone camera to keep the route accurate to centimetres. Makesense Technology Limited, which writes its name MakeSense, calls the device Vector. At its 6 May 2026 cut-off the EIC Accelerator selected the company's VIPER project for a grant-only award, and CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,498,037.50 under an agreement signed on 31 July 2026, running from 1 August 2026 to 31 July 2028.

The company holds that grant three months into a two-year project, so this article is short on results by necessity. What can be checked is the record before the award: a peer-reviewed study, a seed round, filed accounts, and a series of launch targets that have moved from late 2024 into 2026.

A device that bends instead of buzzing

MakeSense's approach comes from research on what its founders call sensory substitution: turning directional information into a movement the hand can feel. In a study announced by Imperial College London on 10 December 2024 and published in Scientific Reports (DOI 10.1038/s41598-024-79845-7), a torch-shaped prototype called Shape bent to show the direction to move and straightened when the user faced the right way. Ten visually impaired participants found virtual targets significantly faster with Shape than with vibration feedback and preferred it; their performance did not differ significantly from ten sighted participants relying on natural vision. The test ran in a virtual reality space indoors, and the Imperial release says further research is needed for real-world conditions.

Vector is the product built on that research. The company's product page describes a pocket-sized device that vibrates and has a haptic dial pointing left and right, paired with a phone camera worn on the chest and an app in which the user picks a destination; GPS and computer vision locate the user to 10 centimetres, and the page says it does not replace the white cane. Routes are currently pre-planned with a sighted guide, which Connected Places Catapult described in May 2024 as "place and trace", similar to the fixed routes a guide dog learns. The same article put the accuracy at several centimetres and said the long-term goal is independent navigation to any destination. The CORDIS summary names the positioning ingredients as advanced satellite positioning, smartphone cameras and motion sensors, and lists RTK-GNSS among its keywords.

Grants first, then a seed round

Small public grants came first. The Department for Transport's TRIG programme, run by Connected Places Catapult, funded two £30,000 projects: a shape-changing haptic guide, listed under 2021, which the programme says took the technology from TRL 2 to TRL 3 to 4, and rail station navigation, listed under 2022, which included a Jubilee line journey from Bermondsey to Canary Wharf. Catapult's May 2024 article dates the two awards 2022 and 2023 instead; the sources disagree. The TRIG pages also list a £500,000 Innovate UK grant and £150,000 from angel investors as follow-on funding, and Imperial names an Innovate UK SMART grant shared by MakeSense, the charity Bravo Victor and the university.

The larger money came in 2024. Catapult reported that a consortium led by EKA Ventures had agreed to invest £2.5 million to bring a product to market within 18 months, after more than £370,000 from angel investors; EKA's portfolio lists MakeSense with a first investment in the second quarter of 2024. In September 2025 the government's Unlocking Space for Business programme named MakeSense, with GIS Navigator, among six projects sharing £1.5 million, to use Earth observation data for safer walking routes; the release gives no figure for the single project.

Companies House records further share allotments on 3 August 2026, three days after the EIC agreement was signed, and new articles of association with resolutions on allotting shares filed on 20 October 2026. The filings do not show how much was raised, and no funding announcement for 2026 could be found. A charge registered in November 2024 was recorded as satisfied in full in July 2026.

What the accounts show

The company files small company accounts without a profit and loss account, so revenue is not public. The balance sheet to 30 June 2025 shows £1,626,001 in cash, net assets of £1,700,574 and an accumulated deficit of £934,758, up from a restated £465,604 a year earlier. Average staff, including directors, was 10, against 5 the year before and 4 in the year to June 2023, per the micro-entity accounts for 2024.

The two filings describe 30 June 2024 differently. The micro-entity accounts for that year show net liabilities of £214,218, with £2,202,009 falling due within a year. The following year's accounts present the same date "as restated", with net assets of £1,942,616 and called-up share capital of £2,158,436. The filed documents do not explain the restatement.

A launch that keeps moving

The clearest gap in the record is the product date. Each source below gave a target; no product launch could be found on the company's website or in news coverage searched on 4 November 2026.

1. 2021 TRIG page
   Late 2024A marketable product at around £4,000, per the TRIG project summary
2. Feb 2023
   Late 2024 or early 2025Launch target for the device then called the Magic Torch, per Catapult's founder profile
3. May 2024
   Within 18 monthsProduct to market after the EKA-led round, per Catapult
4. Dec 2024
   End of 2025First product release, per Imperial College London
5. Nov 2026
   "By Q3 2026"The product page, checked on 4 November 2026, still says to expect news by the third quarter of 2026 and offers an email sign-up, not a purchaseNo launch found

The EIC project itself describes Vector as "a validated handheld device" and sets out to turn it into a hands-free system ready for industrial production. The company has not said publicly whether the handheld version will be sold first.

What VIPER promises

The CORDIS objective lists the work: stronger positioning in dense "urban canyon" streets, field trials with blind volunteers in four countries, scalable manufacturing, CE marking, reimbursement pathways and partnerships with specialist distributors across Europe, with the United States planned for later phases. It also names adjacent uses for the same positioning platform: hands-free navigation for first responders, screen-free consumer navigation, warehouse stock location and geofencing on construction sites. CORDIS shows no total project cost and no reports yet, and a search of CORDIS for the company name returns VIPER as its only EU project.

1. Hands-free, industrialisation-ready VectorNot yet dueProject runs to July 2028; the product page shows a pocket-sized device.
2. Positioning in dense city streetsNot yet dueNo accuracy data from urban tests published.
3. Field trials in four countriesNot yet dueNo trial sites or partners announced.
4. CE markingNot yet dueNo conformity marking announced.
5. Reimbursement and European distributorsNot yet dueNo distributor or payer agreement announced.

Where it fits in EU policy

The award date coincides with a policy push. On 6 May 2026, the day of MakeSense's cut-off, the Commission adopted an enhanced version of its 2021 to 2030 disability strategy, which aims to make assistive technologies and AI accessible and affordable. The Communication, COM(2026) 541, contains a flagship initiative called "Assistive technologies and AI: from lab to market" to strengthen the single market for such products, and calls assistive technology "key to ensure autonomy and quality of life". A UK company can take part because the UK joined Horizon Europe under a deal announced on 7 September 2023.

MakeSense is not the EIC's first bet on blind mobility. The Romanian company .lumen, selected in October 2021, built guidance glasses (CORDIS, our deep dive), and the Estonian company Seventh Sense, selected in March 2022, built a haptic headband (CORDIS, our deep dive). MakeSense's pitch, in its CORDIS summary, is continuous centimetre-level route guidance in cities where GPS often fails.

The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.