The long-term objective of this work is to develop an improved method of displaying tactile information for the deaf. The issues addressed are number of channels used for displaying the desired information, the content (ENCODING) of the displayed signal and, as a secondary issue, the relative noise immunity of two different processing approaches. The specific processing/display types to be examined are: 1) A supplemented formant tracker in which an additional wideband signal will be supplied to the user through an extra specially designed transducer; 2) A formant tracker processor which uses pitch lowered driving signals instead of the more usual single tone encoding; 3) A vocoder which, again, uses pitch lowered driving signals instead of the more usual single tone encoding; and 4) a 24-channel formant tracker using processing similar to that now used by the Tactaid VII (a 7-channel wearable device) but with better resolution. An additional task will be to compare the noise resistant properties of two formant trackers; one using zero-axis analysis techniques while the other uses filter-based analysis techniques. If the results of these studies show promise or any one of these new approaches, Audiological Engineering would undertake the commercial development of the necessary associated technologies in order to make available the more advanced kind of tactile aid for the deaf.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Small Business Innovation Research Grants (SBIR) - Phase II (R44)
Project #
5R44DC000796-03
Application #
3507168
Study Section
Hearing Research Study Section (HAR)
Project Start
1991-09-01
Project End
1994-01-31
Budget Start
1992-09-01
Budget End
1994-01-31
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
1992
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
Audiological Engineering Corporation
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Somerville
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02143