Friday, November 9, 2007

The Blind Can See, The Deaf Can Hear...

Filed under: Geriatrics , OTC

Another conceptual design that can potentially become a product comes from Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands and Philips. Addressing the need of those with both poor hearing and vision, the system combines glasses, a directional microphone, and audio filtering software to create a product a good number of geriatric patients might one day find quite helpful.

Embedded over the length of each spectacle arm are four tiny microphones which transmit sounds from the front and simultaneously blocks background noise.

This creates "directional sensitivity", so sounds coming from the direction of the wearer's gaze are amplified while those from ambient surroundings are dampened. This helps to make conversations clearer in noisy environments where standard hearing aids can often be thwarted by background din.

More from CNET Asia...

(via Sci Fi Tech)

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