Synapse ITS acquires Oko app for visually-impaired pedestrians

Oko uses smartphone camera and AI to help identify crossing signals
By Adam Hill July 21, 2025 Read time: 1 min
Users can simply point their phone camera towards crossing signals to interpret information (© Tctomm | Dreamstime.com)

Synapse ITS has acquired Oko, a navigation app designed specifically to help blind and visually-impaired pedestrians navigate intersections.

Synapse already owns Polara Enterprises, which specialises in accessible pedestrian signals and has its own app - PedApp - which allows users to hear crossing information and remotely activate pedestrian signals from their smartphone.

PedApp is available free, and Synapse says it will reinstate Oko as a free subscription "to make its services accessible to as many pedestrians as possible".

Oko uses the phone's camera and artificial intelligence to help identify pedestrian signals: users can simply point their phone camera towards crossing signals to interpret information - particularly helpful when ADA-compliant (Americans with Disabilities Act) and Prowag-compliant APS are not installed.

What can the Oko app do?

  • Provide feedback through beeps, spoken instructions, or vibrations for users with low vision.
  • Help pedestrians explore their environment, identify accessible spots, and find nearby amenities like restaurants and grocery stores.
  • AI is trained on thousands of crossing images, to recognise and interpret pedestrian signals.

As well as Polara - and now, Oko - Synapse owns Carmanah Technologies, Eberle Design (EDI), Diablo Controls,  Availed Technologies and GovComm.

AI Detection, Monitoring & Machine Vision Classification & Data Collection GIS/ Mapping & Location Based Systems

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • First EV AV on Europe's public roads
    May 23, 2022
    Oxbotica's AppliedEV is now operating in Oxford, UK, with no on-board driver
    Read More
  • Smartphone solution for parking performance
    March 31, 2017
    Automated parking offers optimised space utilisation and fewer damage complaints as David Crawford discovers. As cars become smarter, technology designed to make parking them more straightforward is developing in parallel. In turn, it is becoming clear that the places where vehicles spend much of their time will need to respond – more comprehensively than by supporting established aids such as smartphone-based parking location and reservation, or payment for time used.
    Read More
  • Smartphone solution for parking performance
    March 31, 2017
    Automated parking offers optimised space utilisation and fewer damage complaints as David Crawford discovers. As cars become smarter, technology designed to make parking them more straightforward is developing in parallel. In turn, it is becoming clear that the places where vehicles spend much of their time will need to respond – more comprehensively than by supporting established aids such as smartphone-based parking location and reservation, or payment for time used.
    Read More
  • Geotoll’s payment app could be the smart answer to tolling interoperability
    July 30, 2013
    Jon Masters looks at a smartphone app which could be the ‘disruptive technology’ that eases the way to interoperability in tolling systems. Consumer demand may soon drive the biggest step change yet in tolling. In the United States a new start-up company, Geotoll, has launched a smartphone app for electronic toll payment. It is not beyond possibility that rapid growth of the market for smartphones will continue – an estimated 50% of US citizens and 80% of Europeans now have one – and that the Geotoll brand
    Read More

Highlighted Content