This is something I've put a lot of thought into over the last couple of years, but I've never gotten around to figuring out an actual model or design.
My basic premises are:
* hearing aids are commonly moulded to fit the individual, and thus have exceptionally good noise rejection.
* They are designed to be worn for long periods of time without discomfort.
* The ability to selectively attenuate/amplify certain signals would be very useful.
* Being able to pre-process incoming audio would be extremely useful for suppressing transients (say, gunfire, nearby aircraft, roadworks) to protect the user.
* A phased microphone array could be used to provide directional selectivity, and to determine and recreate the position of the original source.
* You can transparently mix other signals into your normal hearing, such as music, phone calls, games, etc.
In terms of tech, there's really 3 things to figure out:
1. Can you achieve good isolation (external noise attenuation) whilst providing high quality audio playback?
Ideally the quality would be indistinguishable from not wearing them, but physics might disagree.
2. Can you build a relatively compact microphone array with positional discrimination capabilities at or beyond the human ear?
3. Can you build a DSP with the necessary discriminator/transient suppression/mixing capabilities within a realistic power/space/heat budget?
4. Can you build the whole thing into a per-ear unit or headphone unit, with wireless links to some sort of controller, plus sources for input (e.g. a phone or music player)
5. Can you make money out of it? (Given how useful it could be to especially police/military, I'm going to go with 'yes')
> * hearing aids are commonly moulded to fit the individual, and thus have exceptionally good noise rejection.
> * They are designed to be worn for long periods of time without discomfort.
There are already headphones you can get that are moulded to the individual ear. Touring musicians use them on stage for monitors.
The problem with this is that extended hearing aid or in-ear headphone usage is not really the best thing for your ears. Your ears are supposed to ventilate. It's especially problematic if you have an ear infection.
My basic premises are:
* hearing aids are commonly moulded to fit the individual, and thus have exceptionally good noise rejection.
* They are designed to be worn for long periods of time without discomfort.
* The ability to selectively attenuate/amplify certain signals would be very useful.
* Being able to pre-process incoming audio would be extremely useful for suppressing transients (say, gunfire, nearby aircraft, roadworks) to protect the user.
* A phased microphone array could be used to provide directional selectivity, and to determine and recreate the position of the original source.
* You can transparently mix other signals into your normal hearing, such as music, phone calls, games, etc.
In terms of tech, there's really 3 things to figure out:
1. Can you achieve good isolation (external noise attenuation) whilst providing high quality audio playback? Ideally the quality would be indistinguishable from not wearing them, but physics might disagree.
2. Can you build a relatively compact microphone array with positional discrimination capabilities at or beyond the human ear?
3. Can you build a DSP with the necessary discriminator/transient suppression/mixing capabilities within a realistic power/space/heat budget?
4. Can you build the whole thing into a per-ear unit or headphone unit, with wireless links to some sort of controller, plus sources for input (e.g. a phone or music player)
5. Can you make money out of it? (Given how useful it could be to especially police/military, I'm going to go with 'yes')