Ken Takaki（高木 健）

asEars

asEars sound glasses provide enjoyable communication for people with single-sided deafness (SSD). People suffering from SSD have trouble listening to others in noisy situations, and find it difficult to enjoy their conversation. asEars collects the sound that comes from the deaf side by a pair of microphones and transmits it to the other side by a bone conduction speaker. This enables them to listen to others more clearly and enjoy communication better than ever. 

Supporting selective listening between online and offline speakers by focusing on the cocktail party effect

Online conferencing is taking the form of having conversations with people in remote locations, and sometimes with people around them. As a result, it is becoming more and more important for users to be able to concentrate on listening only to what they are interested in from the audio of online and offline speakers. In this research, we focus on the cocktail party effect and propose a speech processing method that facilitates this effect, and realize a system that facilitates selective listening to both online and offline speakers.

Project grant website (Japanese)

Coil design for wireless power transfer and communication over hinges of smart glasses

To make smart glasses foldable, we need wiring within the hinges for interconnecting the sensors and displays. This structure, however, degrades the appearance and durability of smart glasses. To solve this problem, we proposed embedding coils in the hinge’s vicinity for wireless power transfer and communication. This method can safely supply 2 W of power with 50% efficiency and can communicate at the speed of 1.7 Mbps, therefore, it can be used for eyeglass devices that present images and sounds to the user. 

Acoustic Length Sensor for Soft Extensible Pneumatic Actuators With a Frequency Characteristics Model

Soft robots are safe and suitable for interaction with people. On the other hand, they are easily deformed when subjected to an external force. Hence, appropriate control is necessary for their use, based on the state of the actuators represented by their length. However, conventional sensors cannot sense a broad range of length, and they have a non-linear property since they rely on the physical deformation of the sensor itself. We proposed a length sensor that can accurately measure a wide range of lengths by utilizing the acoustic characteristics of the air column inside the actuators.

A method for estimating the bone-conducted transfer function by observing the sound radiated into the ear canal

The measurement of bone conduction hearing requires intensive operation by the user and a long measurement time, making it impractical to measure every time. In this study, we established a method to measure the bone conduction hearing every time the user wears a bone conduction device by using the bone conduction sound radiated into the ear canal. This enabled us to develop a measurement method that is quick and does not involve any manipulation by the user.