Approximately 20 million
people in the United States have some form of hearing impairment. There
are already products available that can notify deaf people of phone calls,
doorbells, alarms, etc., but they are device-specific and not generally
portable.
We have built a prototype for
a device known as the Auditory Alert Apparatus, or AAA, that will alert hearing
impaired people of any noises that are significantly louder than the
environment. The AAA will alert the user of sudden loud noises such as
sirens or alarms, but not ambient noises such as a normal traffic on a busy
street or music playing in a grocery store. Our goal is to make it mobile
and usable in everyday situations. It should be as effective for a honk on
a noisy road as it is for a phone ring in a quiet room.
Auditory Alert
Apparatus
Gregory
Chin
Bryan Fan
Patrick Faner
Justin Hsia
Eric Lew