I n theory, the steps to creating any new technology should be fairly straightforward. You identify a problem, find a solution and release it into the world. But when it comes to understanding how innovation works, we tend to overemphasize the first stage (coming up with the solution) and neglect the next one(making it work). After all, it’s all very well coming up with a new idea, but if it’s too complicated to build then it’s never going to take off.
It’s a problem that Pavan Athreya knows only too well. As a senior engineer in the Siemens Audiology department in Bengaluru, India, he spends his time developing the proofs-of-concept for new hearing aids. “To turn an idea into a product you need innovation, creativity, smart work and a team to nurture your idea and believe in you,” he explains. “But at the very first stages, someone needs to understand how the initial concept becomes reality by figuring out what existing technologies can make it happen. That’s where I come in.”
Pavan’s team are dedicated to making hearing aids better, clearer and more efficient. The secret to staying one step ahead of the game is a formula that Pavan has spent his entire career trying to understand. While his competitors might be focusing on cutting-edge technology, he thinks beyond that. “I call it the bleeding-edge of technology, because innovation happens the moment after the first incision,” he says. “Cutting edge indicates that the technology already exists, but bleeding edge means it is yet to come. That’s the future. This is where the latest and greatest technologies originate.”
Innovation is like an arms race, relying on new products to push competitors out of the market; if a manufacturer slows down, it risks losing out. “Siemens has been working on hearing aids ever since it started,” he says. “The company has been building them for the past hundred years,” says Pavan. It all began back in 1878, when Siemens founder Werner von Siemens put a horseshoe magnet into a phone receiver after he realized that, thanks to amplification, people with hearing difficulties understand telephone calls better than face to face conversation. Since then, the company has been relentlessly trying to come up with the latest and greatest hearing devices by making them smaller, better, lighter and longer lasting — but there are always improvements to be made.
Specializing in Bluetooth, mobile apps, and signal processing, Pavan’s education spans various facets of engineering. Combining a background in creating mobile apps with electrical engineering, he’s one of those rare creatures that understands both hardware and software. “It doesn’t matter what feature I’m working on, I can jump from hardware, to firmware, and then software,” he says. “At the end of the day, our job is to make stuff work.”
It’s one of the reasons why in early 2016 Pavan’s supervisor approached him with an idea. “He wanted to develop an app that allowed hearing aid users to adjust their device according to their personal preference.” says Pavan. Since there are so many different reasons why people suffer from hearing loss, a one-size-fits-all solution rarely works.
Why traditional hearing aids were long overdue an upgrade
Traditional hearing aids merely amplify sounds and they don’t mimic the subtle ways our ears operate in order for the brain to build a detailed picture of the world around us. To put it another way: imagine if wearing glasses meant you couldn’t see perspective. That despite helping you focus, they also removed depth, space and distance in favour of uniform flush outlines. You can see clearer, but only in 2D. For a long time this is how hearing aids have worked. “If you just amplify sound, it’s really unnatural,” Pavan says. “We want to create hearing aids that come as close to the natural hearing as possible. Ideally, it shouldn’t even feel like you’re wearing something in your ears.” But in order to do that, Pavan needed to get to grips with how the human ear works.
Much like our eyes, our ears don’t work in isolation — they rely on each other to feed as much information as possible back to the brain. This information is more valuable when it comes from both sources. The brain compares the different sounds from each of our ears for minute variations in volume, timing, and frequency by calculating diminutive delays in the time it takes for a sound to travel from one ear to the other. This helps the brain figure out where a sound is coming from and how far away it is. The phenomenon is called the head shadow; the time it takes for sound to travel from one ear, round the head, to the other. It’s an unconscious process, so we don’t realise even the smallest of movements helps us understand where sound comes from. For example, if the volume, timing and frequency is the same in each ear it might mean the sound must be coming from directly in front of you. But it could also mean it’s directly behind you. When this happens the brain triggers an instinctual response to tilt the head ever so slightly and check for any differences.
Traditional hearing aids don’t take any of these subtle differences into account, but thanks to new binaural technologies (techniques that replicate how the body uses both ears to build a picture of sound), engineers have the ability to replicate these processes to try and make sound as natural as possible. “Let’s say I’m at a party and there is a lot of noise around me,” says Pavan. “But I only want to hear the person in front of me. There’s another person behind me and two on either side, and they’re all talking to each other. In these new hearing aids we’ve incorporated a feature that detects phases in sound and cancels out sound from unwanted directions.”
But it doesn’t stop there. Our brain uses a process called binaural squelch to separate speech signals from background noise, which is why we can still hear conversations in busy environments. In a new technology developed by Siemens called Binax, the hearing aid has the ability to focus on a specific sound while ignoring any others — even where there are lots of different noises. There’s also something called ear-to-ear synchronization, another Siemens technology that synchronizes sound by using two hearing aids, one on each ear. “You can control the directionality, stream TV, control volumes, change the listening situations, control the bass and treble, mute the device, restarts it,” says Pavan. “You can even contact an audiologist through the device, who can review your setting through the cloud.”
Pavan’s philosophy
None of these new innovations could have been made possible without the integration of Bluetooth technology and IoT. It’s opened up a whole world of new possibilities and has seen the humble hearing aid transformed from nothing more than am amplifier into a personalized and intelligent device.
For someone who spends their working life improving the quality of sound, it’s surprising that Pavan lives in one of the world’s noisiest cities. But the Indian culture Pavan grew up with has had a huge impact on the way he thinks. “I come from a traditional family, where we read a lot of the Vedas,” he says. “I still read the old scriptures because I like languages. I speak about five of them; Kannada, Hindu, English, a bit of Russian, and Tamil.”
Understanding the origins of life plays an important role in how Pavan approaches problems. “From geography to history, understanding where everything comes from is really important,” he says. “It helps us to understand who we are.” Before Siemens, Pavan didn’t know the full extent of how the human ear worked. But his inquisitive mindset forced him to find out everything he could by turning to the top hearing specialists to for guidance. “We should never assume anything,” he says. “If we assume something we will always be disappointed, because it won’t meet our expectations.” Learning never stops for Pavan. At the end of 2017, he left his role at Siemens to study Electrical Engineering in the United States: “I’m all about questioning things,” he says. “How did Sir Isaac Newton or Richard Feynman come up with so many concepts and laws of nature?” Because they asked the right questions. They questioned every philosophical law in nature. After all, there’s no answer without a question.”
Pavan was a Senior Systems Engineer, specializing in IoT, bluetooth low energy and mobile applications. He is now a Graduate Student at USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Find out more about working at Siemens.
Pavan Athreya is a Future Maker — one of the 372,000 talented people working with us to shape the future.
Animation: Dave Whyte
