Project motivationCurrently, there are no solutions for a completely deaf person to communicate with an average man on the street. People suffering from a moderate amount of hearing impairment have the luxury of being able to use a hearing aid, while people who are completely deaf have only sign language at their disposal.
Our project substitutes the sense of hearing by mapping sound to an array of vibrotactile outputs to the users' forearm or hand. We hope this will fade the communication gap between the deaf and the rest of the world. |
Target MarketVast improvements in technology over the past few decades have allowed for extraordinary solutions to the core human problems. There is an estimated 360 million people worldwide suffering from disabling hearing impairment.
Our goal was to provide a low cost, portable/wearable device with minimal restrictions on the user. We had also set constraints such as weight, safety (no exposure to high voltages) and make the device effective for all degrees of hearing impairment. |
Design Symposium
The VTSSHD will be on display at the 2014 Mechatronics Engineering Design Symposium on March 14, 2014, from 1PM to 5PM, in the Davis Centre Lobby, at the University of Waterloo.
Come see us for a demo. Look for this poster. We'll even let you try out device!
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Device Overview
The device is highly dependent on the harmonious collaboration of Electrical, Software and Mechanical designs. Check out our design page to learn more.
Device functionality involves capturing sound from the surroundings and sampling the analog signal using an ADC. This digital signal is then converted to the frequency domain via a fast fourier transform, on which further signal processing is done. The signal is separated and scaled, and then converted back to the time domain using an inverse fast fourier transform. Multiple software threads then are signalled to feed this data to the four piezo electric actuators attached to the users arm. The illustration below demonstrates this process.