Download Pivit Technologies Inc January 22, 2007 Mr. Lakshman One School

Pivit Technologies Inc
School of Engineering Science ♦ Burnaby, BC ♦ V5A 1S6 Project
[email protected]
January 22, 2007
Mr. Lakshman One
School of Engineering Science
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC
V5A 1S6
Re: ENSC440 Project Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
Dear Mr. One:
Hearing loss is a growing concern for many Canadians. Hearing aids are ineffective for
individuals with severe inner ear damage and methods utilizing sight are limited by the
necessity to observe everything that one wishes to hear. At Pivit Technologies Inc., we
aim to deliver acoustic information using the sense of touch to assist the hearing impaired
with daily activities requiring an awareness of noise. We believe the ability to interact
and “feel” the sounds of their environment will result in an improved standard of living
for the hearing impaired.
Our goal is to design and build a PC controlled tactile hearing pad capable of stimulating
the skin through vibrations to determine the viability of delivering acoustic information
through the sense of touch. We detail the key elements of our design, our proposed
scheduling, and an assessment of the costs involved in the attached document, Proposal
for a Tactile Hearing Aid.
Pivit Technologies Inc. is comprised of four dedicated, hard-working individuals: Ryan
Dickie, David Dickin, Mehran Eghtesad, and Merle Kinkade. Please feel free to contact
me by phone at 604-787-4871 or send any questions, comments, or concerns via email to
[email protected].
Sincerely,
David Dickin
CEO Pivit Technologies Inc.
Enclosure: Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a
Tactile Hearing Aid
Project Team: Ryan Dickie
David Dickin
Mehran Eghtesad
Merle Kinkade
Contact: [email protected]
Submitted to: Lakshman One – ENSC 440
Steve Whitmore – ENSC 305
School of Engineering Science
Simon Fraser University
Issued: January 22, 2007
Revision: 1.1
Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
Executive Summary
Hearing loss is a significant health issue. Research shows it is the 4th
largest chronic disability in Canada and its consequences are far
reaching. It affects physical and emotional health, employment,
financial stability, social and cultural participation. People are losing
their hearing at a faster rate compared to past generations due to
industrial and recreational noise.
-- Canadian Hard of Hearing Association.[1]
Clearly, hearing loss is a growing concern, yet we often take our sense of hearing for
granted. It is difficult to imagine how life would change if our ears stopped detecting
sound. Conventional hearing aids act by amplifying sound vibrations; however, if the
damage to the inner ear is significant, there is little recourse for an individual. When
hearing aids are unable to assist, the individual must then rely heavily upon methods
involving the sense of sight to perform their daily functions. These methods, while
helpful, fail to notify the individual at the moment a sound is made and require a constant
alertness of their surroundings which can limit their ability to function at their full
potential.
All noise is inherently composed of tones at varying frequencies. Our goal is to utilize
this quality to transmit audio information to an individual through vibrotactile transducers
attached to the skin. With time, a hearing impaired individual would be able to
distinguish between the vibrations of different frequencies and associate them with the
original audio information. Combined with visual aids such as lip reading, this device
could improve the quality of life of a hearing impaired individual by providing them the
means to becoming more efficient, productive, and successful.
At Pivit Technologies Inc., we recognize the need to implement new methods that will
enable the hearing impaired to perform everyday functions and decrease the physical,
emotional, and social side effects of hearing loss. The company is comprised of four
enthusiastic engineering students who are dedicated to this endeavor: Ryan Dickie, David
Dickin, Mehran Eghtesad, and Merle Kinkade. Their combined technical expertise
encompasses analog/digital system design, real-time and embedded systems, software
and firmware development and basic biology. Thus affording the knowledge base
necessary to research and produce a working prototype.
The goal of this project is to research and develop a prototype tactile hearing aid to be
used in experiments. The results of these experiments will be used to determine whether
this method of sound recognition is a viable concept and lay a foundation for future
tactile sensory devices. The project has been scheduled over a 13 week period and has an
estimated cost of $250 which we expect to have financed through external sources.
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Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
Table of Contents
1.
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................... 1
2.
SYSTEM OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................................... 2
3.
EXISTING SOLUTIONS AND PRODUCTS .................................................................................. 3
4.
PROPOSED DESIGN SOLUTION................................................................................................... 4
5.
SOURCES OF INFORMATION ...................................................................................................... 5
6.
BUDGET.............................................................................................................................................. 6
1.1
1.2
EXPENSES..................................................................................................................................... 6
INCOME ........................................................................................................................................ 6
7.
SCHEDULES ...................................................................................................................................... 7
8.
TEAM ORGANIZATION ................................................................................................................. 8
9.
COMPANY PROFILE....................................................................................................................... 9
10.
CONCLUSION............................................................................................................................. 10
11.
REFERENCES............................................................................................................................. 11
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Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
1. Introduction
The underlying purpose is to develop a system to assist the hearing impaired. According
to the Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD), of the people in the working
age group with a hearing disability, approximately 45.7% are employed. For those with
severe or total loss of hearing, approximately 32% are employed [2]. There is a clear
need for assistance in these demographics and it is our purpose to aid such individuals in
becoming more successful.
There are two main electro-mechanical contributors to hearing loss: conduction deafness
and sensorineural hearing loss [3]. Conduction deafness involves a mechanical
deficiency in the transmission of sound and can often be addressed by hearing aids which
amplify the sound reaching the ear. However, there are many cases where proper
conduction is simply not possible or correctable by surgery. Sensorineural hearing loss
involves a deficiency in the neural pathways and is more difficult to correct. One
approach is a surgical implant method requiring direct stimulation of the cochlear nerve.
Our tactile hearing aid could be used by an individual with either type of hearing loss
without any invasive devices or surgery. It is intended to be a low cost, reconfigurable
system which can be used in conjunction with other techniques such as lip reading to help
the hearing impaired communicate and increase awareness of the noises around them.
Since we intend on using vibrotactile transducers to pass on auditory information, a
user’s hearing capabilities are irrelevant. The only requirement is a sense of touch. The
downside of this approach is that human skin is highly unlikely to be able to interpret
these vibrations coherently on the first attempt. However, with time and practice a user
may learn to understand these sensations in a meaningful manner.
There exists the possibility that we may be unable to convey any meaningful information
through the skin regardless of how well our device is built. Because of this possible
outcome we are defining our primary project goal to include both designing and
developing a prototype capable of mapping audio input frequency information to an array
of vibrotactile transducers and conducting experiments to determine whether basic
sounds can be interpreted using this prototype.
A secondary objective is to facilitate research and allow users to find the optimal audio
transforms in order to test the limits of this technology and tactile input in general. The
system is designed to be reconfigurable through software.
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Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
2. System Overview
Figure 1 is a high level representation of our Tactile Hearing Aid. Environmental noise is
captured by the microphone and sent to the Acoustic to Tactile Processing block. This
block will be implemented with software in a PC, its purpose is to analyze the sound’s
frequency characteristics and map them onto the “Tactile Hearing” Pad which is attached
to the user. This pad is equipped with vibrating components (vibrotactile transducers),
which produce the tactile sensations representing the captured sound. Over time, a
hearing impaired person could learn to interpret these vibrations and the acoustic
information they represent.
Acoustic to Tactile
Processing
“Tactile Hearing”
Pad
Figure 1: High Level System Block Diagram
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Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
3. Existing Solutions and Products
Several attempts were made during the 1970’s and 80’s to produce tactile sensory aids for
both deaf and blind individuals. Some of these devices were tested and are the subject of
various research papers. Some were even commercially available.
Audiotact: Manufactured by Unitech Research Inc. in Madison, WI, this was a 32
channel electrotactile array that can be strapped to the abdomen. This tactile prosthesis
“aided in discrimination of phonemes by lipreading, but was not of benefit in subject
repetition of connected text [4].”
Tacticon: “Saunders et al. (1981 ) developed an auditory prosthesis which adjusts the
perceived intensity of 16 electrodes, each corresponding to the sound intensity in a given
passband in the audio spectrum. This (formerly) commercially available device, the
Tacticon™, provided enough "auditory" feedback to improve the speech clarity of deaf
children, and to improve auditory discrimination and comprehension in some older
patients [4].”
Tactaid: Currently commercially available Audiological Engineering Corp., this tactile
device can “process the information electronically and send a signal containing important
features of that sound to the vibrators,” according to the Tactaid website
(www.tactaid.com). The details of such processes are not described in detail. However,
some research has been done to show that the use of this device can improve speech
tracking by a trained deaf adult when combined with lip reading [5].
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Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
4. Proposed Design Solution
The majority of our efforts will be focused on designing a pad which can transmit
information to the skin easily and effectively. There are two main methods to convey
such information to the skin: electrotactile and vibrotactile transducers.
The use of electrotactile transducers in tactile hearing aids and tactile imaging aids is well
documented. It is possible to stimulate the skin with safe levels of current at a limited
frequency range [4]. The biggest disadvantage of electrotactile stimuli is their extremely
limited range. It is difficult to distinguish between a “soft” and “hard” electric
stimulation without using current levels that exceed pain thresholds of most individuals.
Varying the frequency is also problematic since best results are obtained in a small
frequency range; variations in which are indistinguishable by human tactile sensory [4].
Due to these limitations, electrotactile transducers are commonly used as on-off
stimulations.
Use of vibrotactile transducers has not been studied to nearly the same extent of
electrotactile transducers. Contrary to electric stimulation, using vibration it is possible
to vary the “hardness” and frequency of a single transducer. This gives an extra degree
of freedom in the design and could potentially allow for the use of fewer transducers on a
single pad. This is important because despite the large density of tactile nerves in most
areas of the skin, the spatial resolution of the skin is fairly limited [4]. Spatial resolution
refers the ability of the skin to distinguish between two or more stimuli that are close
together. For this project we will be using vibrotactile transducers.
Another important aspect of the design is the processing unit responsible for analyzing
the sound signals and translating the information to be relayed to the tactile pad. This
unit will be comprised of a microphone, a processing unit, and other necessary circuitry
to interface with the tactile pad. We intend on using a PC as the processing unit for the
prototype. If our results are promising then a commercial product would require a more
mobile processing unit such as an off-the-shelf microprocessor, a DSP chip, or an FPGA.
The purpose of this project is to determine the extent and limitations of the tactile sensory
system to receive and translate sound information. Such measures will be quantified by
outlining specific test procedures and conducting these tests on several individuals.
These tests may include individuals that are deaf or hard of hearing, depending on the
success rate obtained with hearing individuals.
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Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
5. Sources of Information
This project is primarily focused on researching the functionality and viability of a tactile
hearing aid. As such, we will depend on previous research that has been done in this
field to design and test our product. This research can be found in various engineering
and medical journals. Online and library searches will be a great tool for finding and
compiling this research.
We can use biology and medical text books to learn more about the human hearing sense
and apply that information to our project. We can also depend on previous course
material and engineering text books for the more technical aspects of our design.
The expertise of our advisors and mentors is also invaluable. Lucky One, Andrew
Rawicz, Brad Oldham, Vinay Kotamraju, and Amir Niroumand all have experience and
expertise in different areas from biomedical engineering, to hardware and software design
techniques. Their expertise will undoubtedly be of great use to our company and we
intend to utilize it when possible.
Another valuable and unique source of information will be our potential target customers:
hearing impaired individuals. We have already contacted the Greater Vancouver
Association of the Deaf and they have graciously offered to help us by answering some
preliminary questions about previous research in the area, other available tactile aids, and
more detailed questions about the marketability of our product. They have also expressed
interested in trying our prototype when it is ready. This will allow for testing in a wider
range of individuals and should give us a better idea of the potential success rate of
product. It will also help in the redesign and further testing of our product.
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Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
6. Budget
1.1 Expenses
An estimated budget for the equipment required to develop our prototype is given in
Table 6-1. A contingency of 20% is included to cover unexpected costs.
Item
Microphone
Transducers
Pad/Velcro
Wiring
Pad Controller
Circuitry
Controller (PC)
Contingency
Description
Capturing sound for analysis by the
tactile hearing aid
Vibrating modules used to transmit the
information to the skin
Used to place transducers on the skin in
a specified array
Various wiring and connectors for
interfacing pad to the controller (PC)
Circuitry for I/O interfacing of the pad to
the PC
Analyze sound signals and transmit
information to the pad
~20% of total costs
Total
Cost
$30
$100
$30
$20
$30
N/A
$40
$250
Table 6-1: Projected Budget Summary
1.2 Income
We will seek the competitive funding available through the ESSEF (Engineering Student
Society Endowment Fund). Also, the Wighton Development Fund is a potential source of
income. Their grants are competitive but treat projects benefiting human society
preferentially; we believe our project fits well within this description. In the event that
adequate funding cannot be obtained from outside sources then the group members shall
split the remaining cost of the project.
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Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
7. Schedules
Figure 1 is a Gantt chart with our proposed schedule. Milestones are included as coloured
diamonds in the chart. The milestones we chose are not the ENSC 305 document due
dates. Instead, the milestones were chosen based on our desired progress in system
design, development, and testing throughout the semester.
Figure 2: Gnatt Chart with Scheduling and Milestones
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Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
8. Team Organization
Pivit Technologies Inc. is comprised of four individuals all working towards their
engineering degree. We will be responsible for completing the design, prototyping, and
testing of the tactile hearing aid as a group with each individual contributing to both the
technical and non-technical aspects of the project.
Our team is comprised of David Dickin (CEO), Merle Kinkade (CFO), Mehran Eghtesad
(Senior Hardware Engineer) and Ryan Dickie (Senior Software Engineer).
David will be responsible for managing the team as well as setting up meetings,
delegating action items, and updating the meeting minutes. Merle is responsible for
keeping track of financing, controlling costs while trying to obtain the necessary funding.
Mehran is responsible for external contact with technical advisors, potential customers,
and potential test subjects, as well as design and conducting of test scenarios. Ryan is
responsible for maintaining the project file in electronic and hard copy format and also
maintaining other shared electronic resources and software/document version control.
More specific technical responsibilities will be decided based on our different skill sets,
academic backgrounds, work experience, and most importantly interest. The next section
gives a short biography for each team member as well as their areas of expertise and
interests.
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Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
9. Company Profile
David Dickin (CEO)
Dave has been an undergrad engineering student at SFU since September 2002 and is
expected to graduate at the end of summer 2007. He is in the Electronics stream and has a
strong interest in digital design. His previous employers include Sierra Wireless, Nokia
Canada, and Broadcom Corporation. Dave has cultivated strong leadership skills over the
past four and a half years by taking the lead on many course projects. His encouraging
words, calm reasoning, open minded approach, and optimistic attitude allow him to settle
disputes quickly and cleanly before shifting the group focus back towards project goals
Merle Kinkade (CFO)
Merle is a fourth-year Electronics Engineering student at Simon Fraser University.
Through co-op terms at both VTech Communications and UTStarcom she has gained
practical experience in various Computer Aided Design programs along with experience
with PCB layout in analog and digital design. Her interests in technological
advancements that will provide disabled persons an improved standard of living are well
suited towards the goal of Pivit Technologies Inc.
Mehran Eghtesad (Senior Hardware Engineer)
Mehran is a fourth-year Electronics Engineering student, graduating from Simon Fraser
University at the end of this year. His interests include RF and microwave electronics,
digital design, and communication systems. With four co-op terms and more than 16
months of work experience in the high tech industry, Mehran has the technical expertise
required to help Pivit Technologies achieve its goals. Mehran will be responsible for the
hardware design and prototyping of the module and also designing test cases and
scenarios for the research portion of this project.
Ryan Dickie (Senior Software Engineer)
Ryan is a senior Computer Engineering student at Simon Fraser University. Ryan's first
foray into the business world was as proprietor of a small but successful desktop
publishing company. After becoming an engineering student, Ryan has had a diverse set
of job experiences. He spent his first work term on the Port of Vancouver managing
various projects and consulting for a large capital project. He also gained invaluable
supervisory experience. His second work term was for a chemical engineer and
environmental consultant. This work is in fact still ongoing as a highly marketable
product is in the later stages of development. Since January 2006, Ryan has been a
member of the Medical Imaging Analysis Lab at SFU performing biomedical research.
He specializes in biomedical image processing and computation cardiac anatomy of
DTMRI volumes. His business and biomedical engineering experiences will no doubt be
of value for this project.
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Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
10. Conclusion
Sound plays a vital part in our everyday lives. Think of how certain tasks or pastimes
would be inaccessible if we were suddenly unable to hear; the simple pleasure of
listening to a favorite song would no longer be able to lift one’s spirits. While it is
important for those of us who still have full hearing capabilities to take precautions to
prevent hearing loss, for those who currently experience the travesty of partial hearing
loss or worse, complete deafness, the tactile hearing device would act as an aid to
restoring some sense of normalcy to an individual’s life and help them to be more
successful and effective in performing their daily tasks.
Although similar devices currently exist in the market, the tactile hearing aid will focus
on the use of vibrotactile transducers instead of electrotactile transducers to transmit
audio information to the skin. Through testing and carefully planned experiments, the
viability of this technology will be examined and the rate at which an individual is able to
adapt to recognize specific patterns and translate them into audio information will be
determined.
Our scheduling and budgeting are realistic and well thought out. This careful planning
will help ensure that our project is finished on schedule and within budget, providing
valuable information about the commercial prospects of a vibrotactile hearing aid.
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Pivit Technologies Inc
Proposal for a Tactile Hearing Aid
11. References
[1] Canadian Hard of Hearing Association. “Hearing Loss is a Significant Health Issue.”
Internet: http://www.chha.ca/documents/en/beyond_the_hearing_aid_8x11_
01.pdf [18 Jan. 2007].
[2] Canadian Council on Social Development. “Combinations of Disabilities.” Internet:
http://www.ccsd.ca/drip/research/drip19/index.htm [19 Jan. 2007].
[3] R. Seeley, T. Stephens, and P. Tate. Essentials of Anatomy and
Physiology. McGraw Hill, 2007
[4] K. A. Kaczmarek and P. Bach-y-Rita, "Tactile displays," in Virtual Environments and
Advanced Interface Design. W. Barfield and T. Furness, Eds. Oxford University
Press, 1995. (invited review chapter)
[5] M.P.Lych, R.E.Eilers, D.Kimbrough Oller, R.C.Urbano, P.J.Pero, “Multisensory
Narrative Tracking by a Profoundly Deaf Subject Using an Electrocutaneous
Vocoder and a Vibro-tactile Aid,” Jurnal of Speaching and Hearing Research,
vol32, pp.331-338, June 1989.
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