Crowdfunding campaign launched to manufacture assistive listening technology

The Cambridge company’s assistive listening technology - Orsana - overcomes the so-called 'cocktail party problem', a situation in which a person finds it difficult to hear what is being said to them due to being in a noisy environment. Research by Harris Interactive has found that over 80 per cent of adults aged between 40 and 64 find it difficult to follow conversations in noisy cafes, pubs and restaurants. 

Orsana is a small, lightweight device that uses built-in microphones and advanced algorithms to separate speech from noise. To operate it, the user places the device on a table and clear speech will be delivered to the accompanying wireless earbuds.

AudioTelligence CEO Sue Handley Jones explained that most assistive listening devices use beamforming, an established technology that allows a microphone to pick up all the sound in a certain direction.

Orsana uses a different approach, starting with the use of Blind Source Separation (BSS) algorithms that separate individual speech sources from one another, and from the background noise, into separate channels.