Student Team Earns Honors for 'Hearing Assistive Device'

A device developed by a two-student team from Penn State Harrisburg to assist hearing-impaired individuals has earned a $1,000 USD prize in a regional student design contest.

The “Hearing Assistive Device” took third-place honors for the undergraduate duo in the fifth annual design contest held by Rochester Institute of Technology’s Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Student Branch.

Marta Lee Kimmel, an electrical engineering student from Newmanstown, and Jonathan C. Shultz, an electrical engineering technology major from Mount Joy, developed the device.

The Penn State Harrisburg project is designed for individuals with sensorineural hearing loss. Through the use of a digital signal processing (DSP) board connected to a laptop computer, audio can be streamed in, amplified, compressed and the frequencies shifted as necessary to bring the entire hearing spectrum into the range of a specific individual.

As the transformed audio is played through the speakers or headphones, voice recognition software will use the same signal to create a text document which can be saved for future reference. The device will accept microphone, analog recording or telephone inputs.

The purpose of the device developed by the Penn State Harrisburg team is to provide persons with severe to profound hearing loss more accessibility to communication areas they may not have been able to use previously, such as telephone conversations and audio in lecture or meeting settings.

Source: Penn State Live