Panasonic Corporation

Jtekt Corporation

Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd.

The Nisshin Oil Mills, Ltd.

Yoshiaki Takagi

Shuji Miyasaka

Kojiro Ono

Takashi Katayama

Takeshi Norimatsu

Naoya Tanaka

Akihisa Kawamura

Mineo Tsushima

Kok Seng Chong

Gempo Ito

Eiji Noguchi

Hikaru Takato

Yoshihiro Ueda

Tomokazu Ishikawa

Kazutaka Abe

Makoto Nishizaki

Kenichi Aota

Yasuhito Watanabe

Tadashiro Hirose

Kazue Fusakawa

Etsuro Kitami

Megumi Yokokura

Akihisa Kawanabe

Kei Hirose

Susumu Yuasa

Yoshinori Kai

A hearing assistance suitability determining device, that determines suitability including whether a subject can clearly hear speech using dichotic hearing assistance, includes: a subject hearing ability information input unit; a hearing ability type determining unit that determines at least one hearing ability type that corresponds to the hearing ability information, based on hearing ability information frequency characteristics; a suitability determining unit that determines suitability for dichotic hearing assistance based on the at least one hearing ability type determined by the hearing ability type determining unit; and suitability presenting unit that presents the suitability determined by the suitability determining unit. The suitability determining unit determines, by referring to a correspondence relationship, suitability based on clarity improvement amount for speech sound corresponding to the determined hearing ability type, the correspondence relationship indicating, for each hearing ability type, degree of perceived speech clarity improvement by the dichotic hearing assistance.

Hearing assistance suitability determining device and hearing assistance suitability determining method

A hearing aid fitting management system comprises a fitting device, a server, and a client device that are connectable to each other in a network. The server stores hearing ability data received from the client device as a hearing ability certificate, produces a prescription number corresponding to the hearing ability certificate, and sends the prescription number to the client device. The fitting device sends the server the prescription number that has been inputted. The server sends the fitting device the hearing ability certificate corresponding to the prescription number received from the fitting device. The fitting device sends the hearing ability certificate to a hearing aid, and limits the settings in the fitting of the hearing aid to within the range of the hearing ability data.

Hearing aid, hearing aid fitting management system, server device, and computer device

A hearing aid device with a dichotic function comprises a first sound input/output component having a first microphone configured to be worn on one ear, a second sound input/output component having a second microphone configured to be worn on the other ear, and a dichotic setting component. The dichotic setting component determines the occurrence of time masking according to a sound signal inputted from the first microphone or the second microphone, and activates or deactivates the dichotic function according to this determination result. The hearing aid device improves the hearing aid effect.

Hearing aid device

A steering apparatus includes a wire fitting bracket that is fitted to an end portion of a connecting wire for connecting an outer tube to an inner tube and that has a bracket body and a plurality of protrusions. The bracket body is fitted to a steering column-side member with a bolt, and has a bolt insertion hole through which the bolt is passed. The protrusions protrude from the bracket body, and are arranged around an axis of the bolt insertion hole. The protrusions are formed of rotation restricting protrusions that restrict rotation of the wire fitting bracket and an erroneous fitting prevention protrusion that prevents erroneous fitting of the wire fitting bracket.

Steering apparatus and connector

A hearing assistance suitability determining device () according to the present invention is a hearing assistance suitability determining device () which determines a suitability () of a subject for dichotic hearing assistance, and includes: a hearing ability information obtaining unit () which obtains left-ear hearing ability information () and right-ear hearing ability information () each of which indicates a hearing ability for frequencies; a hearing ability type determining unit () which determines, among hearing ability types each of which is defined by a tendency in a change of the hearing ability with respect to the frequencies, a hearing ability type () of the hearing ability indicated by the left-ear hearing ability information () and the right-ear hearing ability information (); and a suitability deciding unit () which determines, with reference to a suitability database (), the suitability () of the subject for the dichotic hearing assistance based on a suitability corresponding, in the suitability database (), to the hearing ability type () determined by the hearing ability type determining unit (), the suitability database () showing a correspondence relationship between each of the hearing ability types and one of suitabilities of the subject for dichotic hearing assistance.

Hearing assistance suitability determining device, hearing assistance adjustment system, and hearing assistance suitability determining method

A hearing aid used for a low tone frequency band, a hearing aid used for a high tone frequency band, and a controller that compares sound pressure of the high tone frequency band split by a frequency band analyzer of the hearing aid used for the high tone frequency band with sound pressure of the high tone frequency band split by a frequency band analyzer of the hearing aid used for the low tone frequency band. If the sound pressure of the high tone frequency band of the hearing aid used for the low tone frequency band is higher by at least a specific amount than the sound pressure of the high tone frequency band of the hearing aid used for the high tone frequency band, the sound pressure of the high tone frequency band of the hearing aid used for the high tone frequency band is raised.

To provide a hearing aid system () performing dichotic-listening binaural hearing aid processing which improves the clarity of speech and maintains the spatial perception ability. Each of first and second hearing aid devices () includes a sound pickup unit () and an output unit () outputting a sound indicated by a suppressed acoustic signal. The hearing aid system () includes: a first band suppression unit () generating the suppressed acoustic signal indicating the sound outputted from the output unit (), by suppressing a signal in a first suppression-target band out of the acoustic signal outputted from the sound pickup unit (); and a second band suppression unit () generating the suppressed acoustic signal indicating the sound outputted from the output unit (), by suppressing a signal in a second suppression-target band out of the acoustic signal outputted from the sound pickup unit (). The suppressed acoustic signals indicating the sounds outputted respectively from the output units () include, in common, a signal in a non-voice band included in the acoustic signal.

System, method, program, and integrated circuit for hearing aid

An audio decoding device of the present invention includes: a decoding unit decoding a stream to a spectrum coefficient, and outputting stream information when a frame included in the stream cannot be decoded; an orthogonal transformation unit transforming the spectrum coefficient to a time signal; a correction unit generating a correction time signal based on an output waveform within a reference section that is in a section that overlaps between an error frame section to which the stream information is outputted and an adjacent frame section and that is a section in the middle of the adjacent frame section, when the decoding unit outputs the stream information: and an output unit generating the output waveform by synthesizing the correction time signal and the time signal.

Audio decoding device, audio decoding method, program, and integrated circuit

A hearing aid () fits in an ear of a user and amplifies a sound and outputs the amplified sound. Specifically, the hearing aid includes: a microphone () as a pick-up unit which picks up the sound; a wireless communicating unit () which receives, from an external apparatus connected via wireless, an instruction for outputting a searching sound, the instruction for outputting a searching sound which is used for outputting a searching sound; an amplifier () which amplifies the outputted sound; an earphone () as an outputting unit which outputs the sound amplified by the amplifier (); and an operation switching unit () which switches between a hearing mode and a searched mode, the hearing mode causing the amplifier () to amplify a hearing sound which is a sound picked up by the microphone () with a use of a first amplification factor, and the searched mode causing the amplifier () to amplify the searching sound, in response to the reception of the instruction for outputting a searching sound, with a use of a second amplification factor greater than the first amplification factor.

Hearing aid, hearing-aid apparatus, hearing-aid method and integrated circuit thereof

A steering apparatus having a stationary bracket fixed to a vehicle body including a pair of first side plates; a receiving portion provided on the steering column for receiving one end of a conductive member; a pair of second side plates; a conductive cylindrical shaft secured between the pair of first side plates and inserted through the pair of the second side plates; and a plate-shaped conductive member interposed between the receiving portion and an outer peripheral surface of the cylindrical shaft. The conductive member includes first and second bow springs that fit the cylindrical shaft resiliently. The first bow spring is interposed between the second bow spring and the receiving portion, a first contact portion of the second bow spring is pressed to the outer peripheral surface of the cylindrical shaft, and a second contact portion of the first bow spring is pressed to the receiving portion.

Steering apparatus

Provided is a multi-channel acoustic signal processing device by which loads of arithmetic operations are reduced. The multi-channel acoustic signal processing device includes: a decorrelated signal generation unit, and a matrix operation unit and a third arithmetic unit. The decorrelated signal generation unit generates a decorrelated signal w' indicating a sound which includes a sound indicated by an input signal x and reverberation, by performing reverberation processing on the input signal x. The matrix operation unit and the third arithmetic unit generate audio signals of m channels, by performing arithmetic operation on the input signal x and the decorrelated signal w&#x2032; generated by the decorrelated signal generation unit, using a matrix Rwhich indicates distribution of a signal intensity level and distribution of reverberation.

Multi-channel acoustic signal processing device

To provide an acoustic signal processing apparatus which can reduce the amount of calculation in matrix arithmetic. An acoustic signal processing apparatus converts down-mixed acoustic signals of NI channels to acoustic signals of NO channels, where NO&#x3e;NI. The acoustic signal processing apparatus includes: a first matrix arithmetic unit for performing arithmetic on a matrix with K rows and NI columns, where NO&#x3e;K&#x2267;NI, for the down-mixed acoustic signals of the NI channels, and outputting K signals obtained after the matrix arithmetic; K decorrelation units for generating signals incoherent, in terms of time characteristics, with the signals obtained after the matrix arithmetic, while maintaining frequency characteristics of the signals obtained after the matrix arithmetic; and a second matrix arithmetic unit for performing arithmetic on a matrix with NO rows and (NI+K) columns for the down-mixed acoustic signals of the NI channels and for the K incoherent signals, and outputting the acoustic signals of the NO channels.

Acoustic signal processing apparatus and acoustic signal processing method

An audio decoder which reproduces original signals from a bit stream including (i) a downmix signal of the original signals, and (ii) supplementary information indicating a gain ratio D and phase difference &#x3b8; between the original signals. The audio decoder includes: a decoding unit extracting the downmix signal; a transformation unit transforming the extracted downmix signal into a frequency domain signal; a phase rotator determination unit determining two phase rotators having, as the phase rotation angles, angles &#x3b1; and &#x3b2; respectively obtained by dividing a contained angle by a diagonal of a parallelogram; a separation unit separating the frequency domain signal into two separation signals respectively indicating angles &#x3b1; and &#x3b2; as phase differences between the signals and the decoded downmix signal; and an inverse transformation unit inversely transforming the respective two separation signals into time domain signals so as to reproduce the two audio signals.

Geometric calculation of absolute phases for parametric stereo decoding

A coding apparatus generates coded data by coding inputted data in a predetermined unit basis, maps one or more units of the coded data onto a packet of fixed length and outputs the packet. The coding apparatus includes a storage unit that stores the coded data and outputs the data size of the stored coded data, and a packetization unit that maps the coded data stored in the storage unit onto the packet and outputs the header size assigned to the one or more units of the coded data and the payload size of the packet. The coding apparatus also includes a control unit that generates the control information based on the data size of the outputted coded data, the header size and the payload size and outputs the control information, and a coding unit that generates the coded data by calculating an outer candidate value that makes the data size of the coded data to be mapped onto the packet an integral multiple of the payload size of the packet based on the outputted control information and coding the predetermined units of inputted data up to the outer candidate value.

Coding method and coding apparatus

A temporal processing apparatus includes: a splitter splitting an audio signal, included in the sub-band domain, into diffuse signals indicating reverberating components and direct signals indicating non-reverberating components; a downmix unit generating a downmix signal by downmixing the direct signals; BPFs respectively generating a bandpass downmix signal and bandpass diffuse signals; normalization processing units respectively generating a normalized downmix signal and normalized diffuse signals; a scale computation processing unit computing, on a predetermined time slot basis, a scale factor indicating the magnitude of energy of the normalized downmix signal with respect to energy of the normalized diffuse signals; a calculating unit generating scale diffuse signals; a HPF generating high-pass diffuse signals; an adding unit generating addition signals; and a synthesis filter bank performing synthesis filter processing on the addition signals and transforming the addition signals into the time domains.

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa, Japan

Yoshiaki Takagi