AI-powered hearables continued to be an important part of CES in 2021. Last year we wrote about Phonax’s Audeo Paradise hearing aids that use AI for continuous environment sensing and to focus microphone sensitivity in the direction of people with whom you are conversing. We also covered the Widex SoundSense Learn machine learning platform that matches wearer preferences and anonymized data from users worldwide to dynamically adjust the hearing experience for different sound environments. Starkey’s Livio Edge AI hearing ads employ a deep neural net to compensate for audio changes and include a pandemic-appropriate Mask Mode to decipher mask-muffled speech.
Evoco Labs’ Orka One hearing aids are a CES 2021 Innovation Awards Honoree in the Health & Wellness category. Evoco Labs claims its patent-pending AI DeNoise artificial intelligence technology is “a server-level neural network on an earphone-level CPU to automatically identify noise, filter it out, and an improve speech understanding in real-time.” The Orka One is a Receiver-in-Canal (RIC) hearing aid with a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Users can configure the hearing aids and control the volume with the iOS or Android Orka Health app on a Bluetooth-associated mobile device. Users can optionally upload a personal audiogram to Evoco customer service via the Orka Health app to check their hearing loss level.
The Orka One has a wireless mode for listening to streaming audio in addition to hearing aid mode. You switch between modes by double tapping on the back of the hearing aid. You can answer phone calls from Bluetooth devices with the Orka One in either hearing aid or wireless mode.
The Orka One hearing aids with AI DeNoise technology sound like versatile hearable devices.
