Frothly’s Blackwall programme has published its pre-deployment evaluation of SHIKAI 4, the perception model in Kiroshi Opticals’ newest implants. The Foundation, as the company’s largest shareholder, welcomes the evaluation and has written to the company about its findings.
Blackwall found that SHIKAI 4 recognised white canes and guide dog harnesses markedly less reliably in low light than in daylight, and that in low light it sometimes classified a white cane as an obstruction rather than as part of a person. The failure was found using KF-LV, the low-vision test set the Foundation’s Chiba Centre built with Blackwall and released in March 2025.
“This is exactly what independent evaluation is for,” said Dr Okabe Sena, the Foundation’s Executive Director. “A fault that matters most to blind and partially sighted people was found before release, by a test set built for them, by evaluators who answer to nobody at the company.”
The Foundation has asked Kiroshi Opticals to fix the fault before release, to have the fixed model retested by Blackwall, and to publish the results. The company has agreed to the first two and said it will publish the retest. The Foundation does not fund Blackwall’s evaluations of Kiroshi Opticals systems and did not see the evaluation before it was published.