Echo location system for vision-impaired persons
OwnerAdam A. Jorgenseninventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Echo locating apparatus for a vision-impaired person which includes: a sound emitter for emitting a stream of sound bursts of ultrahigh frequency; at least on receive channel having a microphone for receiving echoes of the sound bursts and generating echo signals; an echo profile detector for generating an echo profile signal of each echo signal; a delay circuit for adding a delay to the echo profile signal, consisting of the sum of a fixed delay and a variable delay that increases with the distance to the object reflecting the echo. The sound burst emitter is preferably arranged to emit a beam of sound bursts having a given beam angle that can be pointed in any direction.
Claims17
Echo locating apparatus for a vision-impaired person, comprising:
- hand held means for emitting sound bursts of a given fixed frequency;
- echo receive means spaced apart from said sound burst emitting means including at least one receive channel, having a microphone for generating an echo signal for each sound burst received;
- an echo profile detector for generating an echo profile signal of each echo signal, connected to said microphone;
- time stretching means for time stretching the echo profile signal by a constant and a variable amount, connected to said echo profile detector;
- and a receiver-connected transducer connected to said stretching means, acoustically coupled to an ear of said person.
Apparatus according to 1, including an amplifier stage having a logarithmic gain function, for amplifying said echo signal.
Echo locating apparatus for a vision-impaired person comprising:
- means for emitting sound bursts of a given frequency;
- echo receive means including at least one receive channel, having a microphone for generating an echo signal for each sound burst received, an echo profile detector for generating an echo profile signal of each echo signal, connected to said microphone, time stretching means for time stretching the echo profile signal by a constant and a variable amount, connected to said echo profile detector;
- a receiver-connected transducer connected to said stretching delay means acoustically coupled to an ear of said person;
- wherein said variable amount has a decreasing rate of increase.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.