A Vest that Helps the Deaf Feel and Understand Speech

Checkout this article about a vest developed at the Rice University which allows the deaf to feel and understand speech. I think it's a great innovation that will make them have a more emotional communication than sign language.

Original article by Mike Williams, Rice University: Click here to read the whole story

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A vest that allows the profoundly deaf to “feel” and understand speech is under development by engineering students and their mentors at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine.Under the direction of neuroscientist and best-selling author David Eagleman, Rice students are refining a vest with dozens of embedded actuators that vibrate in specific patterns to represent words. The vest responds to input from a phone or tablet app that isolates speech from ambient sound.

Eagleman introduced VEST – Versatile Extra-Sensory Transducer – to the world at a TED Conference talk in March. He is director of the Laboratory for Perception and Action at Baylor College of Medicine and an adjunct assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, of which he is also an alumnus. His lab studies the complex mechanisms of perception through psychophysical, behavioral and computational approaches as well as neuroscience and the law.