Visually Guided Hearing Aid

The VGHA can approximate or even surpass the normal human ear’s ability to choose what to tune into and what to ignore. It does this by making two preexisting technologies—an eye-tracker and an acoustic beam–forming microphone array—work together to counter some of the problems in typical hearing aids. Right now, the VGHA is a lab-based prototype whose components connect via computers and other equipment, but with further development, it could become a pair of portable hearing aid glasses.

The VGHA is the latest advance in Gerald Kidd’s work to solve “the cocktail party problem,” where people with hearing loss struggle to follow conversations in noisy environments. The VGHA addresses these problems by using eye movement (which is quicker than head movement) to steer the aid’s microphones, “like an acoustic flashlight that you’re shining on what you want to listen to,” Kidd says.

Gerald Kidd is a SAR professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences and a specialist in psychoacoustics at Sargent College.

Source: http://www.bu.edu/today/2014/hearing-aid-of-the-future/

VGHA