Light-Emitting Device for Supporting Auditory Awareness of Hearing-Impaired People during Group Conversations

This study proposes a novel wearable device that augments the auditory awareness of hearing impaired people to help them identify the speaker during group conversations. A number of hearing impaired people are able to understand speech by using auditory-oral methods such as lip-reading, however they always need to watch the speaker closely. The proposed device estimates the direction of the sound source and indicates the estimated direction in real time with light-emitting diodes (LEDs), thus aiding hearing impaired people during group conversations. The device has 4 unidirectional microphones and estimates the sound source direction by comparing the signal amplitudes in each microphone. Hearing assistance devices are required to be small and wearable in order to assist anytime in daily life. The proposed device is small, wearable, and can easily be used in various situations.