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网站的说法：“职业听力损失是最常见的工作之一 - 美国的相关疾病。“这部分归因于大量的工人 工作场所的危险噪声水平不使用听力保护设备（HPD）。国家健康和 营养检查调查估计，超过2000万美国工人暴露于危险的噪音。 EL每年在工作中，其中三分之一的工人报告了HPD的不使用。在建筑业中 一半的报告暴露于危险噪声水平，但其中三分之一的报告不戴任何HPD， 四分之一的听力障碍。同样，在制造业中，大约一半报告暴露于危险 噪音水平，但四分之一不磨损保护，有20％的人听力障碍。我们的经验是 HPD在工厂地板上的不使用通常不是由于这种设备的成本或缺乏可用性所致。在 可以看到许多情况，耳塞和其他HPD在工人的脖子上悬挂或塞在口袋里！ 问题是，除了阻止危险的声音外，HPD还阻止了环境中的所有其他声音 - 精神。这很重要，因为对警报的意识（例如，装配线果酱，叉车和移动 起重机）对于这些行业的身体安全和工作表现至关重要。我们提出了一个新颖的听证会 保护系统可增强对“情境”声音的访问，例如警报，叉车和 声音，同时压制了危险的噪音。通过克服环境意识障碍，我们 相信工人将更愿意穿我们的HPD。我们的解决方案使用创新和专利的信号促进 限制技术来“擦洗”危险的声音，每种声音都被邻近地“标记” 麦克风，来自其他“环境”麦克风的响应混合物。 工作空间中的各种位置。这种擦洗过程从响应sig-中消除了标记的噪音 环境麦克风的纳尔，从而增强了其他重要声音的可听性 环境。设想的商业产品将执行此类擦洗，然后出示其余的 使用现有的精确隔离耳机的工人耳朵中的情境声音。在第一阶段项目中，我们 提议构建，验证和擦洗一系列由典型组成的序列日益复杂的音频混合物 Cal Loud Machinery的声音加上柔和的情境声音。我们能够从那些混合物中擦洗大声噪音的能力 - 图片将被客观地衡量。在AIM 1中，混合物是根据记录的噪声对构造的 情境声音。在AIM 2中，我们将记录和分析机械车间生成的声音对。在AIM 3中，我们 通过增加噪声和信号组件的数量和复杂性，将“推动信封” 混合物以及通过移动情境来源和更衣室的声音。我们成功的指标是 擦洗混合物的宽带信号与干扰比（SIR）的改善和特征 这种擦洗的环境可以产生大大提高的情境意识。