THE AKL SPATIOTEMPORAL REPRESENTATION IN A TACTILE AID FOR T

CREARE WILL EVALUATE THE AKL REPRESENTATION, FROM AUDITORY MODELING AND SPEECH RECOGNITION RESEARCH, FOR APPLICATION TO TACTILE AIDS FOR THE DEAF. THE REPRESENTATION IS CHARACTERIZED BY A SMALL NUMBER OF INFORMATION CHANNELS WHICH ARE STATISTICALLY OPTIMIZED FOR REPRESENTING SPEECH. IN PHASE I WE WILL USE COMPUTER MODELING AND NUMERICAL METHODS TO EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE NEW REPRESENTATION AND RELATE ITS PERFORMANCE TO TACTILE PERCEPTION AND TACTILE AIDS EFFORTS BY OTHER RESEARCHERS. WE WILL ALSO EVALUATE TACTILE TRANSDUCER TECHNOLOGY TO DETERMINE THE MOST APPROPRIATE IMPLEMENTATION, BASED ON THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE NEW REPRESENTATION, HUMAN TACTILE SENSITIVITY AND THRESHOLDS, REQUIREMENTS FOR PORTABILITY, ETC. THE APPROPRIATE SIGNAL PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY FOR PRODUCING THE NEW REPRESENTATION WILL BE DETERMINED. IF THE REPRESENTATION APPEARS SUPERIOR, CONSTRUCTION OF A PROTOTYPE AND HUMAN SUBJECT TESTING WILL BE PLANNED FOR PHASE II. THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF THIS RESEARCH IS A WEARABLE DEVICE FOR TACTILE COMMUNICATION OF SPEECH TO BE USED BY THE PROFOUNDLY AND THE SEVERELY HEARING IMPAIRED.