Speech pathologist Sebastien Christian was made aware of the need for sound recognition software to make members of the deaf and hard of hearing communities aware of critical sounds like smoke alarms and sirens by a colleague. She impressed upon him the stress and insecurity of being alone without the reassurance of something that can alert people like her to potential danger. So he formed mobile health company OtoSense, which is raising $1.45 million to advance the development of an app.
In a phone interview with Christian, OtoSense CEO, he described the app as a “next generation acoustic recognition engine” that can infer what environmental sounds are from their sources and describe them. He noted that the app comes pre-programmed with the sounds of smoke alarms that would be familiar to users in the US and Europe, but the app can be used to record sounds relevant to users. Asked what kind of sounds Beta test participants recorded, Christian said doorbells were the most popular. They also recorded things like car horns, the sound of keys falling down, car horns, appliance timers and clock alarms, for example.
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“The audience response has been incredibly enthusiastic,” Christian said. He noted that it’s tweaked different components based on feedback it’s received such as increasing the time between a prompt activating the recorder and recording the desired sound, such as pushing a doorbell.
It is already available for Android smartphones and expects a version for iOS networks to be available sometime by the end of March. It carries a $7.99 price tag. The app also has the capability to be used with Pebble smart watches. Christian estimates the global market for its app at 100 million.
The funding comes mostly from angel investors, including an angel network called Go Beyond. Christian said the funding will support the development of new features for the app and to add a signal processing and programming expert. The company’s staff includes 2 full-time employees and 12 contract workers, as well as bloggers who are deaf and hard of hearing. Although it has headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, some staff are based in Japan and France.
The deaf and hard of hearing communities aren’t the only ones interested in the sound recognition platform. The U.S. military is also working with the OtoSense., specifically the Battlespace Acoustics Division in the U.S. Air Force’s Research Laboratory 711th Human Performance Wing. In a research and development collaboration over the next few years, they will create an autonomous mobile system, powered by OtoSense’s platform, linked to helmet-mounted microphones to convert combat-related sound-associated risks into alerts for pararescuemen, according to a company statement.
