Innovator conveys sound to those with no hearing

Zheng Qingyun and his team are attempting to bring rich, nuanced and spatial sound waves to the deaf community.

In the past two years, Zheng and his team have created VirtX, a tactile suit using innovative textiles to render high-resolution tactile sensations, designed to help those with hearing loss experience sound through touch.

The suit uses advanced electrohaptic rendering technology to simulate tactile sensations and patterns triggered by a variety of sounds, which can assist deaf individuals in experiencing sound waves from spatial directions.

Over 1.5 billion people globally live with hearing loss, with the number estimated to rise to over 2.5 billion by 2030, according to the World Health Organization.

Over 15 percent of people in China have some form of hearing impairment, or 206 million in total, reported China National Radio, citing a survey conducted by organizations including the China Disabled Persons' Federation.

"All of us are very interested in human-machine interaction, and so we decided to develop a product that offers a complementary experience of hearing through haptic feedback," said Zheng, a 24-year-old postgraduate student at Shanghai's Tongji University.

Conventionally, human-machine interaction research focuses on hard materials, but Zheng and his team decided to explore the possibility of applying human-machine interaction to soft materials like fabric. Their research has led to the design of innovative clothes where each thread of fabric is connected to a switch.

"Clothing, as a medium for human-machine interaction, can be naturally integrated into people's daily lives. What's more important is that it can improve people's lives," Zheng said.

In the beginning, the team sought to address the inconvenience faced by people with visual and hearing challenges, so they focused on providing complementary experiences for them through haptic feedback.

As the fabric of the clothes is reversible, this means that in addition to the haptic pattern on the inside layer, some similar haptics are also created on the outside layer, thus allowing partially sighted people to receive assistance.

"Another challenge troubling this specific group of people is that they cannot distinguish the direction of sound. The absent information affects their overall perception of their surroundings," said Zheng.

One example is walking in the street as a vehicle passes by. Ordinary people can tell the location and distance according to the sound made by the vehicle.

"Our VirtX full-body virtual haptic interface is trying to offer sensory support via sound waves to significantly improve deaf people's life quality. Hopefully, the integration of the assistance in the format of clothing can open a new window for them to feel the world," Zheng said.

Despite there being great potential for future commercialization, Zheng admitted there remain challenges with the technology.

The postgraduate said market feedback has inspired them to create products not only for a specific group of people, but also to apply the technology in a wider scope of social scenarios for more opportunities and possibilities.

"With the further development of the invention, our team has discussed with a number of enterprises commercial applications, including entertainment, specific training scenarios and medical applications," said Zheng.

The Virtx design was awarded the top prize at the James Dyson Award in the Chinese mainland this year.