Factory Noise Removal to Preserve Situational Awareness

消除工厂噪音以保持态势感知

• 批准号: 10081963
• 负责人: Joel M MacAuslan
• 金额: $ 14.99万
• 依托单位: SPEECH TECHNOLOGY/APPLIED RESEARCH CORP.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-01 至 2021-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10081963
• 关键词: Factory; Noise; Removal; Preserve; Situational

Abstract According to the CDC NIOSH website “Occupational hearing loss is one of the most common work- related illnesses in the United States.” This is due, in part, to significant numbers of workers exposed to hazardous noise levels in the workplace not using hearing protection devices (HPDs). A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey estimated that over 20 million U.S. workers are exposed to hazardous noise lev- els at work annually, and one-third of those workers reported non-use of HPDs. In the construction industry, half report being exposed to hazardous noise levels but, of those, one-third report not wearing any HPDs and one quarter have a hearing impairment. Likewise, in manufacturing, about half report exposure to hazardous noise levels, but one quarter don’t wear protection and 20% have a hearing impairment. Our experience is that the non-use of HPDs on factory floors is often not due to the cost of such devices or lack of availability. In many cases, ear plugs and other HPDs can be seen hanging around a worker’s neck or stuffed in a pocket! The problem is that, in addition to blocking hazardous sounds, HPDs also block all other sounds in the environ- ment. This is important because awareness of alarms (e.g., assembly line jams, backing forklifts, and moving cranes) is critical for physical safety and job performance in these industries. We propose a novel hearing protection system that provides enhanced access to “situational” sounds such as alarms, forklifts and voices, while suppressing hazardously loud noises. By overcoming the environmental-awareness obstacle, we believe workers will be more willing to wear our HPD. Our solution uses innovative and patented signal pro- cessing technologies to “scrub” hazardously loud sounds, each of which has been “tagged” by an adjacent microphone, from the response mixtures of other “environmental” microphones placed in more acoustically diverse locations in the workspace. This scrubbing process removes the tagged noises from the response sig- nals of the environmental microphones, thereby enhancing the audibility of the other important sounds in the environment. The envisioned commercial product will perform such scrubbing and then present the remaining situational sounds in a worker’s ear using existing acoustically isolating headphones. In the Phase I project, we propose to construct, validate, and scrub a sequence of increasingly complex audio mixtures made up of typi- cal loud machinery sounds plus softer situational sounds. Our ability to scrub the loud noises from those mix- tures will be objectively measured. In Aim 1, the mixtures are constructed from pairs of recorded noise and situational sound. In Aim 2, we will record and analyze sound pairs generated in a machine shop. In Aim 3, we will “push the envelope”, both by increasing the number and complexity of noise and signal components in the mixtures and by moving situational sources and changing room acoustics. Our metric of success is the improvement in the broadband signal to interference ratio (SIR) of the scrubbed mixtures and a characteriza- tion of the environments in which this scrubbing can produce greatly enhanced situational awareness.

抽象的 根据 CDC NIOSH 网站，“职业性听力损失是最常见的工作之一—— 这在一定程度上是由于大量工人接触到了这种疾病。” 未使用听力保护装置 (HPD) 的工作场所的危险噪音水平。 营养检查调查估计，超过 2000 万美国工人暴露在有害的噪音水平下 每年都有人在工作，其中三分之一的工人表示在建筑行业没有使用 HPD。 一半的人报告暴露在危险的噪音水平下，但其中三分之一的人报告没有佩戴任何 HPD，并且 同样，在制造业，四分之一的人有听力障碍。 噪音水平，但四分之一的人没有佩戴防护装置，20% 的人有听力障碍。 工厂车间不使用 HPD 通常并不是因为此类设备的成本或缺乏可用性。 许多情况下，耳塞和其他 HPD 都挂在工人的脖子上或塞在口袋里！ 问题是，除了阻挡危险声音外，HPD 还阻挡环境中的所有其他声音。 这很重要，因为了解警报（例如装配线堵塞、倒车叉车和移动）。 起重机）对于这些行业的人身安全和工作绩效至关重要，我们提出了一种新颖的听证会。 保护系统，可增强对“情景”声音的访问，例如警报、叉车和 通过克服环境意识障碍，我们可以抑制危险的噪音。 相信员工会更愿意佩戴我们的 HPD，我们的解决方案采用创新的专利信号技术。 放弃技术来“消除”危险的响亮声音，每个声音都被相邻的声音“标记” 麦克风，来自放置在更声学环境中的其他“环境”麦克风的响应混合物 这个清理过程消除了响应信号中的标记噪音。 环境麦克风的声音，从而提高了其他重要声音的可听度 设想的商业产品将执行这样的清理，然后呈现剩余的内容。 在第一阶段项目中，我们使用现有的隔音耳机来检测工人耳中的情景声音。 建议构建、验证和清理一系列日益复杂的音频混合物，这些混合物由典型的 计算大声的机械声音和柔和的环境声音，我们有能力消除这些混音中的大声噪音。 在目标 1 中，混合物是由记录的噪声和噪声对构成的。 在目标 2 中，我们将记录并分析机械车间中生成的声音对。 将通过增加噪声和信号分量的数量和复杂性来“突破极限” 混合并通过移动情境源和更衣室声学效果来衡量成功。 洗涤混合物的宽带信号干扰比（SIR）的改善和表征 这种清理可以大大增强态势感知的环境。