How would you feel about a hearing aid that incorporates a video sensor and uses lip reading to enhance only the speech of the person you are talking to? The COG-MHEAR project is looking into this as a future technology for hearing aids.

Hearing aids that can see: can privacy be maintained?

Limits on travel due to the COVID pandemic may have prevented the inaugural COG-MHEAR workshop from taking place in person but enthusiasm was high amongst the COG-MHEAR team for the first (virtual) COG-MHEAR workshop held towards the end of June 2021.

COG-MHEAR holds first industry focused workshop with Sonova

What did you say? – if you have ever had a conversation near a busy road or in a busy restaurant you have probably experienced a bit of trouble hearing what was being said and you may even have missed what someone was saying. Listening in noisy environments can be a challenge, particularly if you have hearing loss. In these types of situations, it can often help to look at the person talking as watching their lips move can help fill in some of the missing gaps.

Introducing COG-MHEAR: A transformative approach to hearing technology

Standing on a box in the centre of Edinburgh to talk about research into hearing and hearing aids.

An Inspiring Day at the Soapbox Science Event in Edinburgh

One way to find out how well hearing technology is working is to get people to try it out, whilst measuring the effort they are having to put in to listen, and the level of fatigue that is causing. But how does this work?

Listening effort and listening fatigue when speaking in noisy environments

How does a network of CCTV cameras recognise the same person or vehicle moving around? And how can this work in poor lighting?

Recognising people and objects as they move around a city

COG-MHEAR research was live on stage as part of the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Dr Dorothy Hardy found out how two audiences might like the hearing aids of the future to work in a show that included a giant pink and black multi-modal hearing aid.

Hearing Aids and Dangerous Ideas

Speech is made up of many elements, including spoken words, other noises, gestures and eye gaze. How can all this be captured in a recording?

Multimodal speech and how to collect it

Finding out about deaf culture, including British Sign Language, as well as learning when and how hearing aids are used, are key in development of inclusive hearing technology

British deaf culture and history

Systems that work with uncertainty can help in the development of hearing aids.

Fuzzy logic in your ear

Hearing aid users give feedback on prototype software and hardware.

How would you like your hearing aid?

Wearable and implantable electronics that are used in health applications including treatment of neurological disorders.

Micro and nanoelectronics for medical devices: from cleanroom to brain

How filtering works to process speech, so that you can hear what you want to hear.

Speech without background noise

A lab where real-life conversations are reproduced realistically; and how this helps in design of better hearing aids. Those annoying details like crisp munching in front of the TV and unintelligible railway station announcements are all included.

Bringing real life into the lab to make better hearing aids

A robot in your ear? Acting as a hearing aid? That was one idea that was being aired at Prof Adam Stokes’ recent talk for the COG-MHEAR teams.

A robot in your ear?

Nick Gompertz visited recently to tell us about the Earswitch that he has invented: a way to control multiple devices from within the ear

Earswitch: Control from within the ear

Researchers came together to talk about speech at the UK Speech 2022 conference in the University of Edinburgh. The COG-MHEAR teams presented posters and found out more about the complexities of speech and ceilidh dancing; plus developments in speech technology.

Talking about speech at UK Speech 2022

The COG-MHEAR teams were delighted to welcome audiologists, clinicians and an industry partner to discuss new hearing technology that can pick out conversation in noisy surroundings.

Hearing technology experts discuss audio-visual hearing aids

Research at the University of Portsmouth that can improve virtual reality by tracking facial muscle movement and recognising emotion.

How computers can sense and understand emotion

Real-time demonstrations of audio-visual speech communication with background noise cancellation, plus smart lip-reading technology showed the audience how our hearing assistive research is progressing at the start of a packed conference programme in Glasgow.

A showcase of developing hearing technology at the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference

The Medical Devices Manufacturing Centre: providing a route from ideas in medical research to new devices and techniques.

Professor Duncan Hand introduces the Medical Devices Manufacturing Centre

Prof John Hansen introduces his work on cochlear implant and hearing aid research

Cochlear Implant and Hearing Aid Research at the University of Texas

The COG-MHEAR research teams joined industry, academic and charity partners to share discoveries from the first year of research.

All Posts

Hearing aids that can see: can privacy be maintained?

COG-MHEAR holds first industry focused workshop with Sonova

Introducing COG-MHEAR: A transformative approach to hearing technology