Have you ever tried to imagine yourself living in a world without sound—— I can't hear the birds singing in the morning, and I have never heard the voice of a close relative. In reality, there are many people like this, who have been living in a silent world.

Xiaoting, 15, is one of them. She had dreamed of becoming a dancer since childhood, but this dream was especially difficult for her with hearing impairment: she could not hear the dance music and could not step on the beat. Although the cochlear implant was implanted, the voice she could hear was also very noisy and could not clearly identify different voices.

But with the help of technology, Xiaoting was able to realize her dream. We cooperated with Nurotron, one of the largest cochlear implant manufacturers in China, to launch the "mobile phone companion+cochlear implant" solution based on Tencent Teana AI audio technology, to improve the hearing experience of hearing impaired people through AI noise reduction algorithm, so that they can truly hear the world.

This is undoubtedly a good news for Xiaoting. She can finally hear the music and beat clearly, and can also distinguish the differences between various sounds, making her dream of a dancer possible. "When she can hear the voice clearly, there is light in her eyes." Xiaoting's mother said, "We can all see it. Her personality has become cheerful and confident."

Xiaoting, 15, with the help of Tencent Tianlai Action, heard the voice and was able to regain the dream of a dancer

Teana Action, hearing aid with AI

according to World Health Organization (WHO) data It shows that about 1.1 billion young people (between the ages of 12-35) around the world are at risk of hearing loss, and about 466 million people suffer from disability hearing loss. Although the cochlear implant has been installed at a high cost, it is still hard to hear in noisy environments such as airports and shopping malls.

Tencent Multimedia Lab Jointly with Tencent Charity Foundation, Shenzhen Information Accessibility Research Association and other institutions, Tencent announced the launch of "Teana Action" to open free Tencent Teana AI audio technology to public welfare developers, equipment manufacturers and public welfare industries, to help solve the noise reduction problem of cochlear implants, improve the use experience of wearers, and then appeal to the community to pay attention to the physical and mental recovery of hearing impaired people, Build an information barrier free environment.

Shang Shidong, senior director of Tencent Multimedia Lab, has focused on audio technology for more than 20 years. He has always been concerned about the challenges faced by hearing-impaired people and understands the inherent problems of cochlear implant, so he sought to explore solutions together with Norcom. After six months of research and development debugging, the Shangshidong team finally finalized the joint solution of "mobile phone partner+cochlear implant", achieving the effect of improving speech clarity and intelligibility by 40%.

"First, on the mobile phone, we use its powerful processing power to preprocess the collected voice signal, and improve the clarity and intelligibility of voice through a variety of technologies." Shang Shidong said, "Then the clean voice after processing is delivered to the artificial cochlea through wireless transmission, and the secondary processing is carried out on the artificial cochlea. Finally, the auditory nerve of the human ear is stimulated to improve the hearing effect."

The experimental detection data of Norcom shows that the combination of Tencent Teana AI audio technology and cochlear implant can make the scene recognition accuracy reach 96%, of which the noisy speech recognition rate is 93%, and the voice recognition rate in environmental noise is 94%.

During the COVID-19 epidemic, "Teana Technology" also played a key role and was applied to Tencent Conference To solve the noise problem in different meeting scenarios.

Science and technology are good, helping to build a barrier free society

As one of the world's largest Internet technology companies, Tencent adheres to the vision of "science and technology for good" and is committed to improving the quality of human life through science and technology.

"New technologies such as the Internet, smart phones, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and big data have enhanced human's ability to understand the world, allowing us to see, hear and think more," said Tang Daosheng, senior executive vice president of Tencent and president of the cloud and smart industry business group.

This year 99 Public Welfare Day During this period, Tencent Foundation launched the "Science and Technology Public Welfare Mutual Aid Plan", which aims to advocate and promote more public welfare projects to solve social pain points through science and technology, and "Sound of Nature Action" is one of the representative cases of this plan.

Now, Xiaoting's life is full of more possibilities, and she even plans to go to college to study computer science. Her sunny personality has also inspired many people. While getting help from people from all walks of life, Xiaoting is also very active in helping other people in difficulty and putting the concept of mutual benefit into practice.

"We have gained a lot, so if I can do my bit to give back to the society, I would be very happy."