You must Sign In to post a response.
  • Category: Miscellaneous

    How does technology make lip reading more accurate in hearing aids?

    Lip reading is a way of communication that helps the hearing impaired understand the conversation. They watch the facial and mouth movements, identify the words pronounced and communicate easily. Improving the skills on how to read the lips would enhance listening and interaction with the people with more practice raising their confidence level. It reduces the feeling of isolation and inferiority. However, it takes time to get used to that speech reading skill.

    At present hearing aids have become a boom to help those with hearing loss in aged people and hearing impaired kids as well. Conventional hearing aids do have drawbacks with the users having difficulty focusing on a conversation in the situations like the cocktail party effect or noisy surroundings. This leads to the improved technology of making smart devices for hearing, in which traditional audio amplifiers are connected to another device collecting data for better performance.

    With more research on these devices, using machine learning algorithms to recognize lip movement and scanning the face with RF signals connected with a radar sensor and a wi-fi transmitter is an ingenious sensing technology to make lip reading more accurate in hearing aids.

    This is my entry for the TOW contest on the topic-reading
  • #769988
    The author has very nicely presented the advancements in the hearing aid technology for the hearing impaired people. There have been considerable improvements in the hearing aid designs. First is the size of the hearing aid so that it is not visible to the other person for cosmetic reasons and second is its efficiency to collect the hearing signal in the best possible manner using the latest technology as described by the author in this post.
    I remember when hearing aids were introduced they came in a flat rectangular box measuring about 3 x 2 inches size and people used to keep them in their front pocket or side pocket and a wire with earphone was going in to their ear and they were able to listen the sound signals received by the hearing aid machine kept in their pocket. Today we have come ahead from that stage and invisible hearing aids are available using small batteries inside them and they can be inserted in the ear and due to the technology used in them the noise level is suppressed significantly and the user gets the best results out of that.
    High quality hearing aids are still very costly and cost in the range of 1 lakh rupees but with the mass production and technological advancements it is likely than the cost will come down in coming times. The middle range common hearing aids are available for Rs 20000 to 40000 while the local made or refurbished ones are even available for an amount of rupees 6000 to 10000.

    Knowledge is power.

  • #769992
    It is heartening to note that hearing aids are available with the affordable costs due to advancements of hearing technology. It has been absolutely necessary to ensure that the deprived persons at least the old people should get such aids at the nominal costs. Looking back the past, hearing aids were big enough to be accommodated inside the pockets. It was rather inconvenient for the people to use such aids but at present even this aid can be placed inside the ear and it becomes to locate them if not closely observed.
    While considering the existing price structure of such device, it needs to be slashed a bit more from the present price of Rs One Lakh but in the local market the cheap variants are available in the range of Rs 20,000 to Rs 40,000.

  • #770001
    Hearing aids are bringing life to people with hearing loss. But there are some limitations. The best of the existing technology is of not much help to the user in noisy environments. Many of the new hearing aid designs are only making small improvements to microphones, power efficiency and noise filtering.
    But smart hearing aids are entirely different and use different technology. They concentrate on the lip moment of the other person. This new technology is making hearing aids users friendly. Traditional hearing aids are of no use when the person is in a noisy atmosphere. He prefers not to use the hearing aid in such an atmosphere. These smart hearing aids can be used in such noisy atmospheres also. The manufacturers say that these smart hearing aids can read the lip moment even if the other person is wearing a mask on his face. Hope these instruments will work usefully and a real life will come to hearing impaired people also.

    drrao
    always confident


  • This thread is locked for new responses. Please post your comments and questions as a separate thread.
    If required, refer to the URL of this page in your new post.