This blog is an update of a topic from my November 2014 blog.\u00a0 In those comments, I mentioned the science fiction of the Star Trek programs that have evolved into the today\u2019s (and tomorrow\u2019s) commercial products.\u00a0 The communicator can be seen as a direct influencer of today\u2019s \u201csmart\u201d phones.\u00a0 Since then, there have been some interesting developments related to phones.\u00a0 But we are not near the potential of the communication devices (I am changing the description from phones).<\/p>\n
There have been significant improvements in hearing aids.\u00a0 These are developing features that are bringing additional capabilities to hearing (communication) assistance devices.\u00a0 Currently some hearing aids have Bluetooth capabilities.\u00a0 The coupling can be done directly to iPhones.\u00a0 Android phones are capable of similar coupling with enabled hearing aids.\u00a0 (I have been informed that the battery usage with Android devices is slighter greater, which should improve in the next generation of features.)\u00a0 So it is possible, to have your phone go directly to a hearing assisted device (HAD<\/strong>).\u00a0 There is no need for other devices to listen to your phone conversation.\u00a0 \u00a0The interesting point is that there is at least one type of hearing aid that is not coupled as a pair to Bluetooth.\u00a0 What does that mean?\u00a0 It is possible to have each ear primarily receiving signals from separate devices or the environment and a device.<\/p>\n Why should we care?\u00a0 There is a new product that will be available later this year called \u201cTravis\u201d [Ref. 1].\u00a0 \u201cTravis\u201d indicates that it will have the capability of translating 20 different spoken languages off-line and 80 with an on-line connection.\u00a0 The program does not auto select, but requires input of the desired language. \u00a0[Disclaimer: This product is in early development as a crowd sourced effort, and is not available to the general public yet.\u00a0 Consequently, the full performance and accuracy are unknown.]\u00a0 Why mention this?\u00a0 \u201cTravis\u201d will have Bluetooth capabilities.<\/p>\n This will be the first of many such devices that will be able to couple to HADs.\u00a0 Given that capability and the ability to have the device in each ear coupled with different devices opens up some interesting possibilities. \u00a0For this to be effective, the performance needs to be very good. \u00a0One of the issues with conventional hearing aids is that they end up with less than ideal performance.\u00a0 In the article discussing new approaches, there is mention that only 25% of people who need a hearing aid actually use one. [Ref. 2] \u00a0There is work being done on developing methods to sort different streams of input signals so that the person is able to sort out what s\/he needs.\u00a0 This need is explained by the term \u201ccocktail party problem\u201d, which explains that distinguishing separate voices from the background noise is done through the brain separating incoming signals into separate streams.\u00a0 That capability is not incorporated into hearing assist devices \u2013 yet.<\/p>\n There are more issues before we can get to a device that is represented by the Star Trek communicator.\u00a0 The directional microphone that is incorporated into the emblem worn in the program is not available, but could be.\u00a0 With the ever increasing power of computers, many of the functions of translating and communicating will be available in packages much smaller than today\u2019s phones. Power is another issue that is slowly being solved.\u00a0 Some efforts are being made to use energy harvesting from a person\u2019s normal daily activities.\u00a0 The incorporation of nano-sized devices is being investigated for various applications, which would assist in prolonging battery life.<\/p>\n There are still many things that need to be developed.\u00a0 Memory is a major problem.\u00a0 The need to store not only words but nuances of other languages starts to rapidly increase the memory size, especially as different languages are added.\u00a0 There have been some articles that indicate a vocabulary of 2,000 words provides the ability to \u201cget by\u201d in a language.\u00a0 For business\/technical conversations, that number increase by a least an order of magnitude.<\/p>\n Take the translator function one step farther.\u00a0 There is a need to be separate Bluetooth connections to a phone for the HAD and for the microphone.\u00a0 The latter is needed to translate the spoken phrase into the receiving language.\u00a0 The other needed function is to be able to reproduce the speaker\u2019s actual voice in that language, which will be coming in the future.<\/p>\n There have been more developments of the tri-corder.\u00a0 This will be covered in a future blog.\u00a0 Enjoy being part of the future as it develops.<\/p>\n References:<\/p>\n Disclaimer:<\/strong> While mentioning \u201cTravis the translator\u201d in this blog, this is not an endorsement of the device being developed.\u00a0 I have no financial interest in the company outside of having ordered a unit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This blog is an update of a topic from my November 2014 blog.\u00a0 In those comments, I mentioned the science fiction of the Star Trek programs that have [..]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc-ramblings","category-nano"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nano-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n