Analog VLSI Neural Control of Ear Type Systems: Correcting Ear Damage and Creating Artificial Ears with Neural-type Control
Prof. Robert Newcomb
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| Dr. Robert Newcomb |
This projects seeks to improve the means of correcting ear damage, stopping tinitus, neural-type control and construction of artificial ears.
The primary goal of the research is to create VLSI (Very Large Scale Integrated Systems) hearing aids which cancel damaged portions of the hearing system noninvasively, and robotic ears with neural-type control.
The research team has made use of stimulated emissions called Kemp echoes, which are signals coming out of the ear due to a stimulus to the ear, in order to characterize the status of
the ear system. From these echoes, the scattering description of the ear system is set up via a predictive cascade estimation theory. In the case of damage to the ear, terms which cancel the damage are incorporated into the ear-type scattering matrix model which is then constructed via VLSI through a device pre-positioned in the ear.
Fluid flows inside the ear due to external signals, such as speech, with the fluid flow moving hair cells which then send signals to the brain indicative of the sound into the ear. Nonlinear fluid dynamical models—equations which model this fluid flow—have been developed and transferred to VLSI transistor configurations for handling the cochlea, mechanical and neural models handle the hair cells, neural-type VLSI cells are considered for signal processing of the brain, MEMS (Micro-ElectroMechanical Systems) capacitors microphones are used as input devices, and energy scavaging is considered for systems’ power.
Using Kemp echoes obtained from a biomedical physics group in Holland, scattering matrix estimators have been obtained for modeling the cochlea for which VLSI circuits have been fabricated, as outlined in the DLP lectures on the web page listed below. At the University of Maryland, College Park, dissertations on hair cells and 4-port ear-type transfer scattering, along with theses on VLSI implementation of ear-type sections, exist. At Universidad Politecnica Madrid, dissertations initiating the research and a specialized laboratory exist. Numerous papers in the literature cover many aspects of this research.
Names of Researchers:
University of Maryland College Park (UMCP): Mr. Ameer Abutaleb [nonlinear cochlea models and VLSI implementations], Ms. Yinyin Zhao [improved ear-type VLSI], Ms. Koranan Limpaphayom [damage cancellation aids], Mr. Mosheh Moskowitz [VLSI capacitive inputs], Mr. Lin Jia [VLSI implementation of ear-ype transfer scattering matrices], Dr. Luiza Sellami [scattering and hair cell models ], Dr. Tien-Shea Cheng [4-port transfer scattering ear-type section synthesis], Ms. Xinhua He [VLSI of Roa neuron], Mr. Juventino Rosas [DC power generation], Robert Newcomb [nonlinear ear-type systems and neural-type circuits]
Universidad Politecnica Madrid (UPM) : Ms. Coral Gonzalez-Concejero [fpga realizations], Ms. Marisa Cordoba [nonlinear ear-type sections], Dr. Victoria Rodellar-Biarge [ear-type system models], Dr. Pedro Gomez-Vilda [fluid modeling of the cochlea]
Universidad de Sevilla: Professor L. M. Roa [calcium inclusive neural-type models]
Web Links:
The Ear Type Systems from Power Point DLP Lectures link at: http://www.ee.umd.edu/file_transfer/RWN_filetransfer.html
And neural-type circuit files are available at:
http://www.ee.umd.edu/newcomb/VLSI_circuits.htm
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