Panasonic Corporation

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

Yasushi Imamura

Yasushi Ueda

Takao Inoue

Takahiro Watanabe

Shigekiyo Fujii

Hiroyoshi Inoshita

Junichi Inoshita

Masaaki Okita

Hiroshi Kondo

Nobuaki Noguchi

Hirotaka Ochi

Kazutaka Maruoka

Hiroyoshi Isozaki

Ichiro Kuwabara

Yuichi Kobayashi

Inoshita Junichi

A hearing aid includes: first and second microphones; first and second A/D converters; a microphone sensitivity correction unit; a hearing assistance processing unit; a microphone sensitivity correction value calculation unit; a storage unit; a failure detection unit; a sound output unit; a D/A converter; and a receiver. The outputs of the first and second A/D converters are input to the microphone sensitivity correction value calculation unit. One output the microphone sensitivity correction value calculation unit is connected to the microphone sensitivity correction unit, and another output thereof is connected to the storage unit. An output of the storage unit and a signal output from the another output of the microphone sensitivity correction value calculation unit are input to the failure detection unit. Output signals of the failure detection unit and the hearing assistance processing unit are input to the sound output unit.

Hearing aid

A hearing aid () comprises a microphone () converting sound into an electrical signal, a processor () disposed inside a main body case (), a first volume adjuster () having a variable resistor, and a receiver () converting an electrical signal into sound. The processor () has an amplifier () amplifying an electrical signal from the microphone (), a second volume adjuster () setting a degree of amplification by the amplifier (), and a controller () controlling the second volume adjuster () and the amplifier (). The controller () detects the resistance value of the variable resistor, determines whether or not the resistance value has exceeded a specific threshold, acquires a specific value for the degree of amplification by the amplifier (), and sets the degree of amplification by the amplifier () to this specific value when the controller determines that the resistance value has exceeded the specific threshold.

Hearing aid and method of controlling volume of hearing aid

There is provided an environment adaptive type hearing aid capable of reducing the erroneous estimation of an ambient environment or the unnecessary changeover of a hearing aid process. The environment adaptive type hearing aid includes an input section () that inputs an ambient sound, a scheduled environment referring section () having a scheduled environment table () to store a scheduled environment candidate corresponding to an ambient environment other than the ambient sound set in advance for the hearing aid, an environment estimating section () that estimates an ambient environment candidate of the hearing aid on the basis of the ambient sound and estimates an estimation ambient environment on the basis of the ambient environment candidate and the scheduled ambient environment candidate, a hearing ability compensation system determining section () that determines a compensation system for the hearing aid on the basis of the estimation ambient environment, a hearing ability compensating section () that processes the ambient sound on the basis of the determined compensation system, and an output section () that outputs the processed ambient sound as an output sound.

Environment adaptive type hearing aid

A hearing aid includes: a sound collection unit configured to collect a surrounding sound; a sound output unit configured to output a sound; and a main body having a shape that can be attached to an ear. The main body includes: a hearing aid processing unit configured to perform hearing aid processing for the surrounding sound collected by the sound collection unit; an attaching determination unit configured to determine whether the main body is attached to the ear based on the surrounding sound; a specific sound generation unit configured to generate a predetermined signal; and a selection unit configured to select one of the sound subjected to the hearing aid processing by the hearing aid processing unit and the sound generated by the specific sound generation unit based on a determination result of the attaching determination unit and to output the selected sound to the sound output unit.

This hearing aid system comprises a first hearing aid () and the second hearing aid () mounted on the right ear. These each have a microphone () for inputting ambient sound, a hearing aid processor () for subjecting sound inputted from the microphone () to hearing aid processing, a speaker () for outputting sound that has undergone the hearing aid processing, a communication component () for performing wireless communication, and a battery () for supplying electrical power to the microphone (), the hearing aid processor (), the communication component (), and the speaker (). The first hearing aid () and the second hearing aid () have a battery charge detector () for detecting the remaining charge of the battery. A power consumption controller () is provided for reducing the power consumption for whichever of the first hearing aid () and the second hearing aid () that has the lowest remaining battery charge when it has been detected that the difference in the remaining battery charges of the first hearing aid () and the second hearing aid () detected by the battery charge detector () is greater than a specific value.

Hearing aid system

A digital signal processor comprises an arithmetic devicewherein a reservation processing register, to which setting to which from the arithmetic deviceis possible and which has a construction for storing an address and an execution mode as a task list, and a clear circuitfor clearing the execution mode when the address in the reservation processing registeris copied to a program counter, are newly added. Threreby, in the digital signal processor comprising two arithmetic devices, it is possible to remove the processing waiting time as well as to change the processing order at respective arithmetic devices.

Digital signal processor

An access controller comprising plural access ports in which information associated with access from a CPU is stored for each access, and a bank management unit for managing use states of the plural access ports and informing the CPU of the use states. The CPU writes the information associated with the access on an unused one of the plural access ports on the basis of the use states provided by the bank management unit. Accordingly, the access controller which has a function of not accessing an erroneous address, suppresses the CPU processing load, and does not require a complicated description of firmware can be provided.

Access controller and access method for controlling access from a CPU to a memory based on use states of plural access ports

The present invention provides a digital signal processing apparatus and a method for controlling the apparatus that allow for a reduction of circuit size to minimize an increase in power consumption and the costs of circuitry and an improvement in signal processing speed. To achieve this, the present invention eliminates a circuit arrangement that was conventionally required for executing a compare instruction, conditional jump instruction, and jump instruction, by adding a relatively small-sized circuit such as an encoder for processing an external signal and a capability of decoding a condition determination data select instruction.

Digital signal processing apparatus and method for controlling the same

In an optical disk drive having the structure of rotating an optical disk under the alternative control of CAV or CLV, when the optical disk is rotated under the CLV control, the loop gains for at least one of the focus servo system and the tracking servo system for controlling the operation of the pickup of the optical disk drive are adjusted based on angular velocity detected by an angular velocity detector which is also used for rotating the optical disk under the CAV control, and, when the optical disk is rotated under the CAV control, the loop gains for at least one of the focus servo system and the tracking servo system are adjusted based on linear velocity detected by a linear velocity detector which is also used for rotating the optical disk under CLV control. The above structure enables the effective saving of electricity and cost in the optical disk drive.

Growing community of inventors

Ehime, Japan

Yasushi Imamura