Hearing Aid

Although hearing aids do make life easier for many people, their limited battery life can be problematic. Scientists have set about addressing that shortcoming, by designing a hearing aid that requires no batteries.

In most hearing aids, sounds emitted by a tiny speaker are directed down the ear canal. The "alpha" hearing aid is different, however – and reportedly better – in that its speaker actually sits directly against the wearer's eardrum.

Audio gear titan Bose has embarked on its first foray into the hearing aid space, and made quite an entrance with the first direct-to-customer model for adults to be cleared by the Food and Drug Administration.

These Bluetooth earbuds are also FDA-approved as hearing aids, and they claim to be able to dial down background noise and clarify conversations thanks to clever real-time audio processing in noisy environments.

Hearing aids are often stymied by the "cocktail party" effect, wherein they can't amplify one person's voice without also boosting the voices of everyone else in the room. A new AI system, however, could help focus the devices' attention where it's needed.

Hearing aids may indeed be commonly used and relied upon in the First World, but they're still too expensive for many people in developing nations. The experimental LoCHAid device, however, is aimed at changing that.

Even in noisy environments, most of us are able to understand what another person is saying by "focusing" our hearing on their voice. Although regular hearing aids are currently unable to do so, that may change if a new prototype reaches production.

Hearing aids can have trouble separating a voice a listener wants to hear from all the background noise. Through a new form of artificial intelligence scientists believe they have come up with a solution that could be of huge benefit to those with hearing impairments.

​When trying to hear what another person is saying, hearing aid users are often stymied by loud background noises, such as the voices of other people in the same room. Scientists at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University are working on a solution, in the form of a "smart" camera-connected hearing aid.

Starkey Hearing Technologies has transformed a single use device into a multi-purpose hearing aid, adding physical activity and cognitive tracking smarts to a device that essentially moves health trackers away from the wrist and wraps them around the ears.

A small Australian company is hoping to blow multi-thousand-dollar prescription hearing aids out of the water. This US$449 pair of over-the-counter, Bluetooth hearing augmentation earbuds can test and adjust to your hearing, connect to your phone, and separate voices from background noise.

​The ultra-fine nature of spider silk has provided inspiration for scientists developing sensitive new types of microphones. Further down the track, these new devices could be put to use in advanced hearing aids and phones that pick up sounds at much lower frequencies.