Innovations in development

Sensory Substitution
  • Infant echolocator for the blind

  • Infant hearing aid using multimodal speech processing

Patents filed
Infant Echolocator: Development of an innovative echolocation device for blind infants that will serve a large population of blind infants who at present have few alternatives to enhance their sensory capabilities and facilitate motor development. The motor development of infants is highly dependent on the visual sense. Blind infants exhibit substantial delays concentrated in areas that involve orientation to the external environment, such as reaching, crawling and walking. Substituting the auditory sense for the visual sense is a promising early intervention strategy.

Infant Hearing Aid: Development of a wearable vibrotactile/bone conduction aid for hearing impaired infants involving vibrotactile perception of vibration on the skin by the sense of touch, and vibration through the skull to the inner ear as the perception of sound. These paths are alternatives to the normal air conduction route to the inner ear hearing receptors.

Echolocator

The figure shows that moving the object a distance of 30 cm across the field of view resulted in a clear movement of the signal strength in the two microphones, allowing binaural echolocating localization of the object. The figure shows two trials (solid and dotted lines) with the object moved at 5 cm intervals. At 10 cm to either side of center, there is a clear difference in intensity at the two microphones of about 10-15 dB.

Infant hearing aid

multimodal speech processing

Page Content and Design : Dr Martin L. Lenhardt
WebMaster: Alan G. Madsen
Last update: Sunday, January 27, 2002