Waveform

According to the World Health Organization, over 466 million people suffer from hearing loss, and that number is projected to rise to 900 million by 2050. Hearing loss is not a unique condition and can happen to anybody as one in two elderly citizens over age 75 suffer from hearing loss. Popular assistive devices that aid those with hearing impairments include hearing aids, cochlear implants, and phone applications. Hearing aids wrap around the user’s ear and amplify surrounding noises but have several drawbacks. They are too expensive and can cost upwards of $7,000, with many insurance plans not covering their costs. This price is unaffordable for many hearing-impaired citizens as the majority are the elderly who have a yearly income of $25,000 or less. Additionally, hearing aids amplify unwanted background noises. The human auditory system can subconsciously filter out background noise from noisy environments such as restaurants and bars. On the other hand, hearing aids amplify all noises rather than just the ones the user wants to focus on causing the user to have a hard time distinguishing individual voices in crowded areas. Finally, most hearing aids are unable to localize sound, which is essential for situational awareness. Our solution is SoundScape, the first assistive listening to separate, localize, and classify multiple sound sources for anyone with hearing loss. We developed a haptic design to be worn around the user’s neck which vibrates in relation to the direction, amplitude, and frequency of a sound source (for our prototypes, we switched out the motors with LEDs for the sake of live demonstration). We developed both a mobile and WatchOS app which displays the classifications for the sound source along with any speech detections. We do all of this at an affordable price of $60 which is much lower than the assistive hearing devices that are priced in the thousands.

We are a group of seniors from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) that met through a hackathon. Eugene Choi: I am 17 years old and have an avid passion for Computer Vision because of its potential to automate and improve mundane tasks. Outside of academics, I am a competitive swimmer for my school and like to spend my time video editing. Recently I have been getting into chess and playing online chess against Raffu. Currently, I have won 5 games against him and he has only won once. (He/Him) Irfan Nafi: I am 17 years old and have spent much of middle and high school working on robotics, electronics, and software projects. I love spending time teaching younger students about programming and have worked with multiple outreach programs in my community to do so. In my free time, I listen to the news, trade on the stock market, and study geopolitical relationships. In the future, I hope to pursue software engineering and start a startup in Silicon valley. (He/Him) Raffu Khondaker I am 18 years old. I have spent much of my high school years conducting research projects on the applications of deep learning in assisting people in their day-to-day lives. Outside of academics, I enjoy reading and illustrating comics for my family and friends. I also enjoy playing chess against Eugene Choi and teaching him how to actually play the game. (He/Him)