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The AngelEye glasses developed by NextVPU (Shaoxing) Co are pictured. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

AngelEye smart glasses, which enable visually-impaired people to perceive the world by transmitting visual signals into audio ones, have been a hit in the global market, local media reported on Dec 5.

Surprisingly, the city that is home to the product is not a metropolis, but rather it it is Keqiao district in Shaoxing, East China's Zhejiang province.

Keqiao boasts a sound business environment for entrepreneurship, and has geographical advantages in connecting with Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang, and Ningbo, another economically developed city in the province, said Wang Wenjun, the director of the AngelEye project conducted by NextVPU (Shaoxing) Co.

Wang added that "it was the right decision" for the project to be established in Keqiao.

Headquartered in Shanghai, NextVPU is a technology innovation company focusing on AI computer vision processing chips.

The company has around 300 employees, of whom more than 80% of the team are R&D engineers recruited from top technology companies like AMM, Intel, and Qualcomm. NextVPU has applied for over 200 patents globally. It has established branches in German and Japan.

"Our aim is to endow visual abilities to robots and usher in a new era for artificial intelligence," said Feng Xinpeng, CEO of the company's Shaoxing branch.

According to Wang, the company's leadership learned in 2016 that Keqiao was holding its first entrepreneurship and innovation competition for overseas high-level talent. They brought the AngelEye project to the competition.

In the next year, the company set up a branch in Keqiao, said Wang.

Wang also praised the efforts made by the local government of Keqiao in streamlining the approval procedures for starting up new businesses.

He said that the company will expand its operations next year, adding that they will move to a new 380-square-meter office.