HearCom

Funded by: The European Commission » (FP6 IP project)

Official webpage: http://www.hearcom.org

Personnel:

• Arne Leijon
• Bastiaan Kleijn
• Svante Stadler
• Minyue Li

Project summary

Our society is strongly and increasingly communication-oriented. As much of this focuses on sound and speech, many people experience severe limitations in their activities, caused either by hearing loss or by poor environmental conditions. In most cases these conditions only just meet the needs for adult native-language, and normal hearing people, but fall short for vulnerable groups like elderly, hard of hearing, young children, and second-language users.

Objectives

The HEARCOM project aims at full participation in the modern communication society by reducing the limitations in auditory communication.

Project structure

The work HEARCOM project focuses on the following topics, which correspond to organizational "subprojects":

• The identification and characterization of auditory communication limitations,
• The identification, modelling, and evaluation of ambient conditions that limit auditive communication in everyday situations,
• The development of standardized testing and evaluation procedures for hearing impaired persons,
• The development of rehabilitation and signal enhancement techniques that compensate adverse ambient conditions and personal disabilities,
• The development of innovative assistive personal communication technology based on wireless communication links and assistive applications integrated in mainstream technologies, and
• The development of Internet services that assist individuals and professionals in the improvement and compensation of communication problems.

Project partners

The project is performed by a large number of partners across all of Europe. The partners include academic, semi-government, and commercial entities.

KTH role

The work at KTH is focused mainly on points no. 4 and 5 above. It leads the work packages on noise suppression and on work on a wireless communication link between hearing aids and a personal communication hub for the hearing impaired.