Camera-Based Hearing Aid Audio Classification
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Solution Overview
Problem
Hearing devices struggle to classify a wide range of acoustic environments and activities due to limitations in capturing rare or unique sound scenarios, often resulting in suboptimal sound processing and user experience.
Innovation Solution
A system integrating an image sensor and a hearing device with a controller that identifies optical components and associates them with sound data to adjust audio classes, enabling improved sound classification and real-time recommendations for the user.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If hearing devices use only audio sensors to classify environments, then the device complexity remains low, but the sound classification accuracy is insufficient for rare or unique sound scenarios
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines an image sensor (camera) with the hearing device to create a multi-sensory system. The image sensor captures visual information of the environment, which is then integrated with audio data from the audio sensor. This merging of optical and acoustic data sources enables more accurate classification of rare or unique sound scenarios that audio alone cannot distinguish, directly resolving the contradiction between classification accuracy and device complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The hearing device is enhanced with multi-functionality by incorporating an image sensor that serves dual purposes: capturing visual environment data for classification and potentially serving as a wearable camera for user documentation. This multi-functional approach allows the device to handle diverse environments and activities more effectively, improving sound classification accuracy without requiring entirely separate specialized devices.
2Adaptability or versatility
If hearing devices capture every possible sound scenario exhaustively, then the sound classification coverage improves, but the loss of time and resources for data collection becomes prohibitive
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary classification by analyzing visual information from the image sensor first. By identifying key environmental features and objects in the image data before processing audio, the system can pre-determine the likely sound scenario category. This preliminary action reduces the time needed for exhaustive audio analysis and enables faster adaptation to new environments.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent adds a visual dimension to the traditional audio-only classification approach. By incorporating image data as an additional dimension of environmental information, the system can classify sound scenarios more efficiently without needing to exhaustively capture and analyze every possible acoustic pattern. The visual dimension provides contextual cues that accelerate the classification process.
3Loss of information
If hearing devices use multiple sensors (image and audio), then the information completeness for environment classification improves, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a controller as an intermediary component that manages the integration between the image sensor and audio sensor. The controller receives data from both sensors, processes the information, and coordinates the classification algorithm. This intermediary structure simplifies the integration complexity by providing a centralized management point for multi-sensor data, reducing the burden on individual sensor components and making the system more manageable despite the increased information completeness.
Data Source
AI summary
A system includes an image sensor, a hearing device, and a controller. The controller may include one or more processors and may be operatively coupled to the image sensor and the audio sensor. The controller may be configured to receive image data from the image sensor and sound data from the hearing device. The controller may further be configured to identify one or more optical components using the image data, each of the one or more optical components associated with an object or activity; determine one or more audio objects using at least the one or more optical components and the sound data, the one or more audio objects may each include an association between at least a portion of the sound data and the object or activity; and adjust an audio class using the one or more audio objects, the audio class associated with the object or activity.