FW-HTF-P: Wearable Adaptive Cognitive Assistance to Auditory Situational Awareness for Workers Exposed to Complex and Dynamic Noises

人类技术前沿项目的这一未来工作将为处于危险噪音环境中的工作人员创造智能听力保护设备(HPD)。长期暴露在高水平的噪音中会导致严重的心理和身体健康问题。然而，简单地阻止所有声音的听力保护也消除了重要的安全提示，如声音警报。随之而来的情景意识的降低可能会极大地增加严重工业事故的风险。该项目研究一种新的可穿戴式听力保护技术，该技术使用人工智能(AI)放大安全关键声音并帮助定位其来源，同时大大减弱环境噪声。如果成功，该项目将使基于人工智能的HPD解决方案的开发能够在提供全面听力保护的同时保持听觉情景感知。这一结果有可能改善工作绩效和安全，并将每年暴露在危险噪音水平下的约2200万美国工人的职业性听力损失降至最低，同时节省相关的社会和经济成本。要说服雇主和工人接受新的可穿戴安全设备可能很困难。因此，本项目包括技术、心理和社会经济研究部分，以实现对控制智能HPD采用和部署的因素的全面了解。本跨学科项目旨在推动自适应可穿戴增强听力保护技术领域的发展。这一规划项目包括两个突破口。第一个重点是确定重要的设计考虑因素、人类和环境因素对听觉感知决策的潜在影响、主要相关行为者(即工人、商业领袖、政策制定者和保险代理人)的需求和信念，通过各种参与、实地访问、个别会议和焦点小组。第二个重点是通过进行全面的文献回顾、多学科研讨会和与建筑工人进行的几项试点研究来探索适当的解决方案，重点是：i)基于人工智能的声音识别，ii)用于听觉情况感知的人机协作，以及iii)在工作中使用可穿戴安全技术的社会经济学模型。该项目将产生关于用户和其他相关利益攸关方的需求和关切的新知识。该项目还将为基于计算语义学的声音过滤模型的开发生成新的数据，该模型考虑了重要的人类和工作特定因素，包括听觉认知、工作复杂性、听觉中的生物个体差异以及听觉理解的人机合作。此外，该项目将提供必要的见解，以模拟认知型HPD的社会和经济视角之间的相互关系。该项目的最终目标是发展必要的研究人员、研究基础设施和基础工作，以在FW-HTF全面研究计划的层面上扩大研究未来技术、未来工人和未来工作的机会。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Future of Work at the Human Technology Frontier project will create intelligent hearing protection devices (HPDs) for workers in settings with hazardous noise volumes. Long-term exposure to high levels of noise can cause serious mental and physical health problems. However, hearing protection that simply blocks all sound also eliminates important safety cues, such as audible alarms. The resulting reduction in situational awareness can greatly increase the risk of serious industrial accidents. This project investigates a new wearable hearing protection technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to amplify safety-critical sounds and help locate their source, while greatly attenuating ambient noise. If successful, this project will enable the development of an AI-based HPD solution to preserve auditory situational awareness while providing comprehensive hearing protection. The result has the potential to improve job performance and safety, and minimize occupational hearing loss for the approximately 22 million U.S. workers that are exposed to hazardous noise levels each year, with the associated social and economic cost savings. It can be difficult to convince employers and workers to accept new wearable safety equipment. Thus, this project includes technological, psychological, and socioeconomic research components, to achieve a complete understanding of the factors controlling intelligent HPD adoption and deployment.This interdisciplinary project aims to advance the field of adaptive wearable augmented hearing protection technology. This planning project includes two thrusts. The first thrust entails identifying important design considerations, the potential impacts of human and environmental factors on aural sensing decision making, the needs and beliefs of key relevant actors (i.e., workers, business leaders, policymakers, and insurance agents) through a variety of engagement field visits, individual meetings, and focus groups. The second thrust entails the exploration of appropriate solutions by conducting a comprehensive literature review, a multidisciplinary workshop, and several pilot studies with construction workers, focusing on: i) AI-based sound recognition, ii) human-machine teaming for auditory situation awareness, and iii) socioeconomic modeling of using wearable safety technologies at work. This project will produce new knowledge about the needs and concerns of the user and other relevant stakeholders. The project will also generate new data for the development of computational semantics-based sound filtering models considering important human and work specific factors including auditory cognition, work complexity, biological individual differences in hearing, and human-machine teaming for aural comprehension. Further, this project will provide insights necessary to model the interrelationship between societal and economic perspectives of cognitive HPDs. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop the necessary research personnel, research infrastructure, and foundational work to expand the opportunities for studying future technology, future workers, and future work at the level of a FW-HTF full research proposal.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.