Highly Miniaturized Ultrasound Devices for Enhancing Human-Machine Interfacing of Hearing Aids****

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The vast majority of today's digital devices are controlled using a combination of buttons and/or dials, requiring direct, physical contact with the user. Recent research in 'virtual' button control technologies demonstrated their outstanding potential for portable devices, such as remote control devices, smart phones and tablets. For example, advanced hearing aids which are currently controlled by a few tiny buttons on the ear units, can be benefited from 'virtual' control interfaces. Hearing aid companies are under constant pressure to build new functionalities into their devices, making them more complex and difficult to operate: users must quickly navigate through a vast number of options, select and activate the desired functions - all in time to respond to their own ever-changing personal needs, but also in response to rapidly and dynamically changing acoustic environments. Thus, button-based interfaces, physical or virtual, are severely limiting for users who cannot fully utilize the functionalities of their hearing aids effectively, which frequently leads to frustration and low user compliance. Similar limitations exist in many other application areas as well. One almost ubiquitous example is the voice command system in automobiles, where users must issue a number of voice commands, navigating through several layers of virtual menus before the desired command can be chosen, by which time the right moment might already have passed.