Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
6.2
PERCEPTUAL-BASED SENSORS
The most frequently used sensors of today are indeed based on physical proper-
ties to convert the inquired quantity. The physical-based sensor techniques have
emerged from basic demands of the industrial era since years back. Nowadays
physical-based sensors are frequently used in many different types of sensor tech-
niques that indirectly convert environment properties to corresponding electrical
sensor data ready to interface with computers. For example, several thousands
of sensors are strategically placed in an industrial paper production line, where
they are incorporated in parallel systems to be able to confirm the normal pro-
cess performance status and indicate for deviation in expected behaviour. There is
certainly a clear fact that considers physical sensors to be a main base for the ad-
vanced industrial progress which had taken place during the last century. In this
section we will further discuss the perceptual-based sensor systems.
6.2.1 Auditory-Based Physical Sensors
Human beings have a primarily dominant structure in the visual oriented percep-
tion. Compared with the visual world, the sensations of other senses, e.g., tactile or
auditory, are significantly less developed in our lives, Norretranders (1998). Corre-
spondingly, we may recognise concepts that are described in a visually dominant
manner and descriptions that are primarily assumed from visual objects, Blauert
(1996). This peculiarity may be seen in expressions where visual object related
functions experienced as dominant, for example, we usually state that “the phone
sounds“ instead of saying “the sound phones”.
The artificial sensors that complement the human perception are today a nat-
ural element in the individual striving to freedom and an including way of living.
The development has facilitated the available techniques to reduce individual acu-
ity and has been since generations using implants and correction aids as a mean to
enhance our own sensing. These aids have facilitated the acuity for many people
and made them experience a normal life.
The aids shown in Fig. 6.2 illustrate an example of the auditory developments
of physical-based sensors that are used as complementary aid. Through the years
the supportive devices must surely be the most eagerly awaited benefit for the
needy individual and would indeed have provided a better live. The spatial hear-
ing experience is nowadays an interest of intensive research, where the challenge is
a system's ability to control and in some manner also optimise the attributes of an
auditory sensation at a distance from the human. The spatial hearing is consider-
ing the listener at a distance and certain directions from the sound source to corre-
spond as closely as possible to the conditions at the source. This phenomenon will
often create a hearing to many people who are around due to the often miserable
audio-related conditions in a social interaction, in group-mingling as well as when
communicating by using mobile phones as communication between two individ-
uals. The phase dependence of auditory signals also influence on the information
Search WWH ::
Custom Search