Factory Noise Removal to Preserve Situational Awareness

消除工厂噪音以保持态势感知

• 批准号: 10081963
• 负责人: Joel M MacAuslan
• 金额: $ 14.99万
• 依托单位: SPEECH TECHNOLOGY/APPLIED RESEARCH CORP.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-01 至 2021-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10081963
• 关键词: Factory; Noise; Removal; Preserve; Situational

Abstract According to the CDC NIOSH website “Occupational hearing loss is one of the most common work- related illnesses in the United States.” This is due, in part, to significant numbers of workers exposed to hazardous noise levels in the workplace not using hearing protection devices (HPDs). A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey estimated that over 20 million U.S. workers are exposed to hazardous noise lev- els at work annually, and one-third of those workers reported non-use of HPDs. In the construction industry, half report being exposed to hazardous noise levels but, of those, one-third report not wearing any HPDs and one quarter have a hearing impairment. Likewise, in manufacturing, about half report exposure to hazardous noise levels, but one quarter don’t wear protection and 20% have a hearing impairment. Our experience is that the non-use of HPDs on factory floors is often not due to the cost of such devices or lack of availability. In many cases, ear plugs and other HPDs can be seen hanging around a worker’s neck or stuffed in a pocket! The problem is that, in addition to blocking hazardous sounds, HPDs also block all other sounds in the environ- ment. This is important because awareness of alarms (e.g., assembly line jams, backing forklifts, and moving cranes) is critical for physical safety and job performance in these industries. We propose a novel hearing protection system that provides enhanced access to “situational” sounds such as alarms, forklifts and voices, while suppressing hazardously loud noises. By overcoming the environmental-awareness obstacle, we believe workers will be more willing to wear our HPD. Our solution uses innovative and patented signal pro- cessing technologies to “scrub” hazardously loud sounds, each of which has been “tagged” by an adjacent microphone, from the response mixtures of other “environmental” microphones placed in more acoustically diverse locations in the workspace. This scrubbing process removes the tagged noises from the response sig- nals of the environmental microphones, thereby enhancing the audibility of the other important sounds in the environment. The envisioned commercial product will perform such scrubbing and then present the remaining situational sounds in a worker’s ear using existing acoustically isolating headphones. In the Phase I project, we propose to construct, validate, and scrub a sequence of increasingly complex audio mixtures made up of typi- cal loud machinery sounds plus softer situational sounds. Our ability to scrub the loud noises from those mix- tures will be objectively measured. In Aim 1, the mixtures are constructed from pairs of recorded noise and situational sound. In Aim 2, we will record and analyze sound pairs generated in a machine shop. In Aim 3, we will “push the envelope”, both by increasing the number and complexity of noise and signal components in the mixtures and by moving situational sources and changing room acoustics. Our metric of success is the improvement in the broadband signal to interference ratio (SIR) of the scrubbed mixtures and a characteriza- tion of the environments in which this scrubbing can produce greatly enhanced situational awareness.

摘要 根据疾控中心NIOSH网站的说法，职业性听力损失是最常见的工作之一- 在美国的相关疾病。这在一定程度上是由于大量工人暴露在 不使用听力保护设备(HPD)的工作场所的危险噪声水平。A国民健康和 营养检查调查估计，超过2000万美国工人暴露在有害噪音水平- ELS每年都在工作，其中三分之一的工人报告没有使用HPD。在建筑业， 一半的人报告暴露在危险的噪音水平下，但在这些人中，三分之一的人报告没有佩戴任何HPD和 四分之一的人听力受损。同样，在制造业，大约一半的人报告暴露在危险的环境中 噪音水平有所下降，但四分之一没有佩戴防护装置，20%的人听力受损。我们的经验是 工厂车间不使用HPD通常不是因为这种设备的成本或缺乏供应。在……里面 许多情况下，可以看到耳塞和其他HPD挂在工人的脖子上或塞在口袋里！ 问题是，除了屏蔽有害声音外，HPD还会屏蔽周围环境中的所有其他声音- 门槛。这一点很重要，因为对警报的感知(例如，装配线堵塞、倒车和移动 起重机)对这些行业的人身安全和工作表现至关重要。我们提出了一种新的听证会 保护系统，提供对警报、叉车和 声音，同时抑制危险的巨大噪音。通过克服环境意识障碍，我们 相信员工会更愿意佩戴我们的HPD。我们的解决方案使用创新和专利的Signal PRO- 利用技术“擦洗”危险的响亮声音，每个声音都已被相邻的 麦克风，来自其他“环境”麦克风的响应混合物，放置在更好的声学效果 工作空间中的不同位置。该洗涤过程从响应信号中去除标记的噪声。 环境麦克风的NAL，从而提高环境麦克风中其他重要声音的可听性 环境。设想的商业产品将执行这样的擦洗，然后呈现剩余的 使用现有的隔音耳机，在工作人员的耳朵中发出情景声音。在第一阶段项目中，我们 建议构建、验证和擦除由以下类型组成的日益复杂的音频混合序列： CAL响亮的机械声音加上更柔和的情景声音。我们有能力去除这些混音中的噪音- 价格将被客观地衡量。在目标1中，混合体由记录的噪声对和 情景音效。在目标2中，我们将录制和分析在机器车间中产生的声音对。在目标3中，我们 将通过增加噪声和信号组件的数量和复杂性来“推动极限”。 通过移动情景声源和改变房间声学效果。我们衡量成功的标准是 洗涤后混合物的宽带信干比(SIR)的改善及其特性 改善这种擦洗可以极大地增强态势感知的环境。