LED glasses allow the deaf to ‘see sound’

Everyone has ‘that sound’ that drives them mad, whether it is the unwanted sound of your alarm clock the morning after Smack, or the dreaded Rootes fire alarm that is guaranteed to go off at least twice on a Friday night. But sound is also something that many of us take for granted…

As humans, we instinctively divert our attention to a loud or unexpected sound – a car horn for instance, which is a cue for danger. These sounds can save our lives – for example, if you forget to look both ways before crossing the road, the noise of a car horn can cause you to abruptly stop in your tracks and prevent being hit by a car.

However, deaf people are unfortunate enough to miss out on such lifesaving cues, and fail to benefit from other social and emotional aspects of sound, such as the pleasure associated with hearing a loved one’s voice. But is this about to change?

Quite possibly it seems, as researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have built a pair of glasses that allows the wearer to ‘see’ sound and detect the direction from which it came.

The glasses have 7 microphones mounted to its frame which detect the location of a sound before relaying it to a set of LEDs implanted inside the frame. The wearer can alter the device so the lights only flash when a sound above a particular threshold level is detected, to eliminate non-important sound.

However such a breakthrough invention isn’t without its controversies; currently the glasses require the wearer to carry a laptop around with them to process the signal. This has resulted in many questioning whether this inconvenience outweighs the benefits of the glasses.

While these flashlight glasses probably aren’t the most practical of developments, they do demonstrate how technological innovations are fuelling scientific advancements, particularly in the health world to improve people’s lives.

In today’s society, many of us are becoming increasingly dependent on technology and by 2015 it is estimated that 500 million people worldwide will be using mobile healthcare applications for self-diagnosis, reflecting the scientific trend to find novel ways for us to improve our well-being.

Some particularly interesting innovations include a touchscreen Braille writing device which builds buttons around the users fingers, in order to help the blind write; a UV sensitive wristband which changes colour indicating when the wearer is in danger of sunburn, and heat-proof face paint, which protects soldiers from explosives that can reach temperatures of 600oC.

It is clear that technology plays an essential part in many of our lives and it is beginning to play a more vital role in our ability to improve our health. However is our dependence on it becoming too great, or should we just sit back and enjoy the benefits it has to offer?