Vision-Aided Hearing Aid with Visual Sound Display
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Solution Overview
Problem
Hearing-impaired individuals face challenges in understanding important information from sounds without amplifying environment noise and require time to adjust to cochlear implants, which can lead to non-use.
Innovation Solution
A vision-aided hearing assisting device that uses a display device, microphone, and processing unit to analyze surrounding sound signals and display relevant messages, including sound source direction and emergency alerts, to facilitate understanding without noise amplification and quick user adaptation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If hearing aids amplify sounds to help hearing-impaired individuals, then hearing capability is improved, but environment noise is also amplified making it difficult to distinguish important sounds
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and isolates specific sound sources from the mixed audio environment using voice print technology and signal processing. The system identifies target speakers and extracts their voices from the composite sound field, separating important information from background noise without amplifying the noise itself.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies different processing qualities to different sound sources. Target speaker voices receive enhanced processing and amplification, while background noise and non-target sounds are suppressed or left unamplified. This creates localized quality enhancement for specific frequency ranges and spatial directions corresponding to important sounds.
2Reliability
If cochlear implants are used to enable hearing, then hearing capability is improved, but it takes a long time to adapt and recognize sounds leading to non-use
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a visual copy of the acoustic information through display devices. Speech-to-text conversion generates visual representations of heard sounds, allowing users to immediately understand sound content without requiring neural adaptation. This visual copying bridges the gap during the adaptation period and provides immediate comprehension.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces visual display as an intermediary between the cochlear implant and the user's understanding. The display device mediates the information transfer by converting acoustic signals into visual text or waveforms, providing an intermediate representation that is immediately comprehensible while the neural adaptation process occurs in the background.
3Loss of information
If visual display is added to provide sound information, then understanding of sound information is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent integrates multiple functions into a single wearable device system. The hearing assistance device combines audio processing, voice print recognition, speech-to-text conversion, and visual display capabilities in one integrated system. This multi-functionality reduces the need for separate devices and streamlines the user experience despite the increased capabilities.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Enables hearing-impaired users to quickly comprehend surrounding sounds and react to emergencies by displaying information visually, reducing reliance on noise amplification and speeding up the adaptation process to assistive technology.
Implementation Method 1
The microphone senses surrounding sound so as to generate a surrounding sound signal
Data Source
AI summary
The present invention discloses a vision-aided hearing assisting device, which includes a display device, a microphone and a processing unit. The processing unit includes a receiving module, a message generating module and a display driving module. The processing unit is electrically connected to the display device and the microphone. The receiving module receives a surrounding sound signal, which is generated by the microphone. The message generating module analyzes the surrounding sound signal according to a present-scenario mode to generate a related message related with the surrounding sound signal. The display driving module drives the display device to display the related message.