The second part of STEM, taught by Dr. Kevin Crowthers, is focused on the assistive technology (AT) project that involves the creation of a device to solve a problem for a client.
People with auditory impairments often find themselves unaware of their surroundings, especially during conversations involving multiple people. People may acknowledge a deaf person behind them, for example, but they would have no way of knowing what sound is out of their line of sight.
The chosen design is centered around a pair of glasses that displays to the user the direction of incoming sounds and potentially identify them. We first used CAD to make connective parts, then integrated a Raspberry Pi with a dual microphone array and a transparent OLED screen which is mounted on the glasses. The Raspberry Pi is attached to a case on the back of the head, containing a battery and the Pi itself. The dual micrphone array is connected to the Pi, which uses audio input delays to estimate the direction of the sound. The Pi then sends the direction to the OLED screen. Everything is held together by a flexible headband.
The current prototype is simply the Raspberry Pi, two micrphones, and the OLED screen. Currently, only directional features are supported with plans to later expand into live captioning.
