Joseph Franklin

Title: Joseph Franklin and a Tactile Speech Aid for Deaf Individuals.

Introduction

Joseph Franklin is an inventor associated with Somerville, Massachusetts. His work includes a patent for a wearable tactile aid designed to convey information from speech through vibration.

Latest Patents

Franklin’s listed patent, “Method and Apparatus for Sound Responsive Tactile Stimulation of Deaf,” describes a flexible carrier strip fitted with vibration transducers that rest against the wearer’s skin. Each transducer uses an enclosed, magnetically vibrated cantilevered beam, with an angled mounting slot to help maintain skin contact. Contact pads provide electrical connections while reducing the mass of the transducers.

The system processes acoustic signals through circuits that detect speech formants and divide them into sub-bands corresponding to individual transducers. It measures and averages formant frequency and amplitude, then uses the resulting signals to control the transducers’ pulse-width-modulated vibration. The patent also describes monitoring glottal pulses to produce a related stepped-down rate signal, which modulates channel amplitude and alternates transducer excitation. Additional formants can be detected to convey further information. Franklin is credited with 1 patent.

Career Highlights

The patent combines wearable hardware with signal-processing techniques to translate selected features of speech into tactile stimulation. Its design addresses transducer positioning, electrical connections, and the encoding of speech characteristics through vibration.

Collaborations

The supplied information names Paul G. Hughes and David Franklin as Franklin’s coworkers. It does not specify their roles in the patent or describe the nature of their collaboration.

Conclusion

Joseph Franklin’s patented tactile aid presents an approach to making speech information accessible through wearable vibration transducers and signal processing.