Head Tracking Hearing Aid for Automatic Source Switching

描述(申请人提供)：先进医疗电子公司计划开发一种先进的无线助听器，它可以跟踪用户的头部运动，并提供基于用户焦点的自动音频源切换。拟议的高级助听器将使用户能够在更多样化的对话情况下使用助听器。由于滤除背景声音的能力有限，助听器在嘈杂的环境中表现不佳。无线配套麦克风和消费电子适配器将音频直接传输到用户的助听器，更不受背景噪音的影响。虽然这些设备已被证明可以在嘈杂环境中改进语音识别，但它们产生了一个源选择控制问题，当有多个源时，该问题负担沉重，并限制了它们的用途。拟议中的增强将允许用户只需转动头部即可自动切换信号源，就像拥有正常双耳听力的人所做的那样。助听器行业需要更先进的功能，以鼓励75%以上的已知听力损失患者使用助听器，这些人将受益于助听器。拟议的增强型助听器将使用户能够在常见情况下更有效地使用助听器。头部跟踪将使用集成到助听器中的非常低功率的磁强计来完成，类似于现代智能手机中的磁强计。该系统将根据头部朝向的方向，自动调节可用的音量，包括助听器和内置麦克风。磁力计所需的额外功率将不到正常运行的10%，并且仅在从远程来源传输音频时消耗。电池寿命不会受到显著影响。在第一阶段，AME将开发和评估一个原型系统。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Advanced Medical Electronics proposes to develop an advanced wireless hearing aid that tracks user head movements and provides automatic audio source switching based on user focus. The proposed advanced hearing aid will enable users to utilize hearing aids in more diversified conversational situations. Hearing aids perform poorly in noisy environments due to a limited ability to filter out background sounds. Wireless companion microphones and consumer electronics adapters stream audio directly to the user's hearing aid and are more immune to background noise. While these devices have been proven to improve speech recognition in noisy environments, they create a source selection control issue that is burdensome and limits their utility when there is more than one source. The proposed enhancement will allow for automatic source switching by the user simply turning their head much like a person with normal binaural hearing would do. The hearing aid industry needs more advanced features such as this to encourage the more than 75% of people with known hearing loss who would benefit from hearing aids to utilize them. The proposed enhanced hearing aid will enable the user to use their hearing aid more effectively in common situations. The head tracking will be done using a very low power magnetometer integrated into the hearing aid similar to the ones found in modern smart phones. The system will automatically adjust the audio volumes from available sources including the hearing aids internal microphones based on which way was the head is facing. The additional power required by the magnetometer will be less than 10% of the normal operation and will only be consumed while streaming audio from a remote source. Battery life will not be significantly impacted. In phase I, AME will develop and evaluate a prototype system.