Phonak, Swiss group Sonova’s primary brand, has launched a new hearing aid powered by a dedicated real-time artificial intelligence (AI) chip, the first such product in the global market. The new product, dubbed the Audéo Sphere Infinio, is designed to separate clear speech from background noise. If successful, it would be a considerable advance on conventional hearing aid technology, which largely works by evenly raising the volume of surrounding noise for the wearer instead of allowing them to more clearly discern individual voices or sounds.
“Solving the speech-in-noise problem is the long-standing goal of modern hearing aid development and essential to improving the quality of life of millions of people with hearing loss,” said Sonova Group’s CEO, Arnd Kaldowski. “While every user would state we have come a long way in the last ten years, they will say they still can’t understand conversations as well as they would like to, when background noise is present, like in many crowded places, such as public transport or restaurants. We are convinced that with our new technology, we can make a significant difference for people in need.”
AI hearing aid world’s first
The Audéo Sphere Infinio is equipped with two chips: the Phonak Infinio platform’s Phonak ERA chip and what the company claims to be the world’s first real-time AI sound processing chip. Named DEEPSONIC and trained on 22 million sound samples, this latter chip, Phonak claims, enables improved speech clarity from all directions and enhances the hearing aid’s signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by 10dB.
“To achieve these significant results, you must implement a powerful Deep Neural Network (DNN) in a hearing aid,” said Andi Vonlanthen, Sonova’s global head of research and development for hearing instruments. As such, added Vonlanthen, DEEPSONIC’s development “took many years and a significant investment in technology development. We are excited to see this innovation going to market now.”
The new AI hearing aid will be released later this month, along with other Infinio platform-based products such as Audéo R Infinio; CROS R Infinio; and Virto R Infinio.
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