Development of a Prototype Sensory Device as a Substitute for Single Sided Deaf People in Developing Nations

Abstract

Hearing loss is the inability to hear sounds ranging from 20 decibels or more in one or both ears. It can affect one or both ears and leads to difficulty in hearing speech or sounds in general. Single-sided deafness or unilateral hearing loss is a very widespread disability. However, most people only see hearing loss as being a binary problem assuming that you either have perfect hearing in both ears or are completely deaf in both ears, and dismiss the other types of hearing loss. Sensory substitution involves remapping the information gathered by one sensory receptor to another. Sensory receptors regardless of the signals they receive or capture, all encode the gathered information as electrochemical signals. This biological property of sensory receptors, coupled with the human brain’s neuroplasticity allows sensory receptors to be substituted, giving rise to new methods of sensory perception. This study aims to develop a sensory device known as a localizer. The localizer detects sound using numerous sound sensors, and feeds the input to the microcontrollers which then use the input to control the eccentric mass motor by implementing various motor drivers. The results gotten from this prototype device shows great improvement in the ability of a single-sided deaf person to localize sound.