Operating a hearing device for classifying an audio signal to account for user safety
AssigneeSonova AG
InventorStephan Müller
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The disclosure relates to a method of operating a hearing device comprising an input transducer and an output transducer, the method comprising classifying an audio signal by attributing at least one class from a plurality of predetermined classes to the audio signal, wherein different audio processing instructions are associated with different classes; and modifying the audio signal by applying the audio processing instructions associated with the class attributed to the audio signal. The disclosure further relates to a hearing device configured to perform the method.
Claims14
A method of operating a hearing device configured to be worn at an ear of a user, the hearing device comprising an input transducer configured to provide an audio signal indicative of a sound detected in an environment of the user and an output transducer configured to generate a sound output according to the audio signal after a modifying of the audio signal, the method comprising
- classifying the audio signal by attributing at least one class from a plurality of predetermined classes to the audio signal, wherein different audio processing instructions are associated with different classes;
- and
- modifying the audio signal by applying the audio processing instructions associated with the class attributed to the audio signal, characterized in that the audio processing instructions associated with at least one of said classes comprise audio processing instructions related to a lower user safety which can be replaced by audio processing instructions related to a higher user safety, the method further comprising
- determining a confidence measure indicative of a probability that the class is correctly attributed to the audio signal;
- and,
- when the probability indicated by the confidence measure is below a threshold and the audio processing instructions associated with the class attributed to the audio signal comprise the audio processing instructions related to the lower user safety,
- applying, during said modifying of the audio signal, the audio processing instructions related to the higher user safety in place of the audio processing instructions related to the lower user safety;
- wherein said modifying of the audio signal performs a beamforming with a directivity of audio content in the modified audio signal in a front or back direction of the user when the audio processing instructions related to the lower user safety is applied;
- and
- wherein said modifying of the audio signal performs a beamforming with a directivity of audio content in the modified audio signal in omnidirection of the user when the audio processing instructions related to the higher user safety is applied.
A hearing device configured to be worn at an ear of a user, the hearing device comprising
- an input transducer configured to provide an audio signal indicative of a sound detected in an environment of the user;
- a memory configured to store a plurality of audio processing instructions, wherein different audio processing instructions are associated with different classes which can be attributed to the audio signal;
- an output transducer configured to generate a sound output according to the audio signal after a modifying of the audio signal;
- and
- a processor configured to
- classify the audio signal by attributing at least one of said classes to the audio signal;
- and
- modify the audio signal by applying the audio processing instructions associated with the class attributed to the audio signal,
- characterized in that the audio processing instructions associated with at least one class comprise audio processing instructions related to a lower user safety which can be replaced by audio processing instructions related to a higher user safety, the processor further configured to
- determine a confidence measure indicative of a probability that the class is correctly attributed to the audio signal;
- and,
- when the probability indicated by the confidence measure is below a threshold and the audio processing instructions associated with the class attributed to the audio signal comprise the audio processing instructions related to the lower user safety,
- apply, during said modifying of the audio signal, the audio processing instructions related to the higher user safety in place of the audio processing instructions related to the lower user safety;
- wherein said modifying of the audio signal performs a beamforming with a directivity of audio content in the modified audio signal in a front or back direction of the user when the audio processing instructions related to the lower user safety is applied;
- and
- wherein said modifying of the audio signal performs a beamforming with a directivity of audio content in the modified audio signal in omnidirection of the user when the audio processing instructions related to the higher user safety is applied.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.