Augmented reality (AR) has the potential to improve our daily lives, radically changing the ways we work, play, and connect with each other. And sound plays a crucial role.
According to a new paper from Facebook Reality Labs (FRL) Research, AR could help “enhance” hearing aids to help people become more socially engaged and stay connected with friends and family.
“By combining beamforming, deep learning techniques, active noise cancellation, and contextual awareness of your surroundings, AR can help us arrive at a system that understands what you want to listen to, isolates and enhances the sound’s source, and reduces background noise. By sending the enhanced AR-processed signal back to the hearing aid, you get the best of both worlds: turning up the volume only on the sounds you want to hear, while adjusting for your unique hearing ability — to let you follow a conversation with less effort.”
Facebook says it views AR platforms as augmenting the hearing aid — not replacing it.
For more details, watch the video and read the full story on Facebook here.
Citation:
Mehra, Ravish; Brimijoin, Owen; Robinson, Philip; Lunner, Thomas Potential of Augmented Reality Platforms to Improve Individual Hearing Aids and to Support More Ecologically Valid Research, Ear and Hearing: November/December 2020 – Volume 41 – Issue – p 140S-146S doi: 10.1097/AUD.0000000000000961
Source: FRL
