Abstract
It has been determined that hearing‐impaired and normal‐hearing subjects can learn to identify words using only a tactile vocoder [Brooks and Frost, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 74, 34–39 (1983)]. Further studies have shown that certain multichannel tactile vocoders provide significant help in understanding connected discourse as an aid in lipreading [Weisenberger and Miller, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 82, 906–916 (1987)]. A review of this research is given in a companion paper (Weisenberger, Abstract J1). Motivated by these results, a wearable, 16‐channel vibrotactile aid has been developed that can be used by hearing‐impaired subjects during normal daily activities. The system consists of a body‐worn processor that is 3.5 × 5.5 × 1.5 in. in size and a vibrator array worn on the arm. In addition to the 16‐channel vocoder algorithm, the microprocessor‐based system can be programmed to implement other processing algorithms using the existing hardware. The system and its performance characteristics will be described. [Work supported in part by NIH.]
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