Canford in the Community

By John Slider, Canford Community Ambassador

I think it’s fair to say that the pandemic has affected all of our lives and daily activities and none more so than in the field of education. It may well be some considerable time before the true effects on the wellbeing of our children’s education is known. In my role as Canford’s “Community Ambassador” I have witnessed first-hand the challenges faced by our schools and educational establishments and have been astounded by their resilience in continuing to deliver lessons both in class and remotely. You may know that in previous years Canford participated in a number of activities with the Engineering Development Trust (EDT) which is a dedicated nationwide charity that delivers a number of key programs designed to enhance students understanding of industry. One such program was the Go4SET which partnered Canford with local schools such as Biddick Academy, St Roberts of Newminster, Seatonburn College and Monkseaton Academy to name but a few. The programs involved pupils from each school in some form of engineering project where Canford acted as their adviser and mentor. This involved visiting the schools on a weekly basis to meet with the students and their teacher and to monitor the progress of the project. During each project the students were invited to spend a day in Canford to meet with selected departmental managers and to gain an understanding of all the various career paths within a manufacturing and distribution company. At the end of the project the students would submit their project to the National body who would decide the winners in a variety of categories. Well this year EDT decided to rebrand the Go4SET program which is now known as the Bronze Industrial Cadets Program which due to the pandemic was to be delivered virtually! This had far reaching consequences as it meant the program could be delivered nationally with no geographical boundaries being applied. Basically this meant that Canford could be partnered with schools in any part of the country but after careful consideration we informed EDT that our preference was to continue to partner schools in our local community and hence we were partnered with Newcastle High School for Girls. The program began in January and my fears as to how it would work on a virtual platform were quickly dispelled as the technology allowed me to “meet” with the teacher and the pupils in their own homes on a weekly basis. The girls themselves were magnificent not only attending our weekly meetings but also putting in a great deal of additional work over the weekends. They chose an environmental project and at times were ably supported by John Driver our Design Manager and Mark Brindley our Operations Director with all encounters taking place on the ZOOM platform. Although they put together an excellent project document they did not feature among the national winners of the awards.

The national awards which involved hundreds of schools from around the UK took place in July with Canford sponsoring both the Best Teamwork and Determination Awards which were won by The Matthew Arnold School from Oxford and the Harris Garrard Academy from Kent. Canford was in some elite company as a sponsor alongside such companies as Rolls Royce, BAE Systems and the RAF to name but a few. Our awards were presented by Iain Elliott our CEO who also gave an excellent presentation on Canford and its business activities. I think Iain was genuinely surprised at the scale of the competition especially the sheer number of schools taking part. The only disappointment was that the students from Newcastle High School could not visit Canford due to the pandemic but Stephen Gallagher made up for this by providing a multitude of YouTube videos showing the students what goes on within our factories.

Educational Diversity

For the first time we were asked to participate in an Educational Diversity Initiative which involved engaging with pupils from the UK’s largest Pupil Referral Unit. These are pupils who have been excluded from main stream education for a variety of reasons such as social, emotional, behavioural or medical difficulties. We were partnered with the unit that deals with serious behavioural problems with students in the 14 to 16 year old category. Two teams each comprising of 6 students were given an engineering project to complete over a three day period. Representing Canford my role was to act as an Industry Expert and to assess each project and to select winners in various categories such as Teamwork. I was advised that the students may not engage with me and that I may face a blank screen given the presentations were being delivered on the TEAMS platform. I was also advised that my role was to boost confidence levels rather than concentrating on the technical merits of their work. As it turned out one team did an excellent presentation while the other would not meet with me relying on their teachers to make the presentation on their behalf. I must say that the content of both presentations was to a very high standard and I sincerely hope that the presentation I made to them on Canford and manufacturing companies in general will inspire them to pursue qualifications that will enable them to re-enter full time education and hopefully the world of work. This kind of engagement makes one realise just how lucky some of us are.

The Future of Engineering

Canford rightly prides itself on the technical expertise of its design and engineering teams and for the past two years has been heavily involved with the Arkwright Engineering Scholarship Program. These scholarships are awarded to 16 year old students who go through a rigorous selection process which supports them through their A Levels or equivalent qualification. Each scholarship is funded by a commercial company, a university or a branch of the armed services. This means support can be offered in a variety of ways such as hands on experience. Applications are accepted from schools throughout the four countries of the UK and literally hundreds of applications are received annually. Over the past 30 years 6,000 scholarships have been awarded with over 30% being awarded to females. To be a successful applicant you must have your application endorsed by your school, then sit a two hour aptitude exam followed by a 30 minute interview by a team of assessors. Only around 20% of applicants are finally accepted. Canford’s participation to date has been to volunteer my services as an assessor and a mentor. I spend three or four days attending various universities around the country where the exams and interviews take place. This year all interviews were conducted virtually on the TEAMS platform. At the interview the candidates present an engineering project which they have completed and are given 10 minutes to explain the content and then they face questions from the assessors. Frankly the quality of projects is mind blowing and if this is a sample of the engineers of the future then the UK is in excellent hands! Hopefully Canford will be able to offer some placements in the coming years that not only will benefit the student but also our company. Finally I have to end on a sad note. This year due to the pandemic we have not been able to participate in Teacher Externships where teachers can visit Canford and learn about careers in manufacturing and engineering plus I normally visit 10 to 15 local schools giving presentations on Canford and STEM careers. Hopefully we will be able to get back to some kind of normality in the near future.

“Canford rightly prides itself on the technical expertise of its design and engineering teams and for the past two years has been heavily involved with the Arkwright

Engineering Scholarship Program”.

John Slider

More than Music

By Paul Power, Technical Support Engineer

In the UK It is estimated that around 4.3 million people used Apple headphones and earphones, with Sony and Beats being ranked second and third respectively. In-ear devices were the most popular in 2018 with around 14.9 million people in the UK using these devices and the global market size was valued at $21.2 billion and is projected to reach $93.9 billion by 2026, see https://bwnews.pr/3BIyoFl. The majority of smartphone users rely on headphones to listen to music with wireless earbuds growing in popularity due to their size and the inclusion of a number of facilities like Google assistant, noise cancelling, hear through technologies that allow listeners to blend in their surrounding acoustic environment and the convenience factor when exercising.

Health & Fitness Monitoring

Research suggests that the ear canal and tympanic membrane (ear drum) are more reliable than the wrist for monitoring human body health. The reasons for this are that the inner ear is darker, which helps as infrared light is used to measure vital functions. It is closer to the main arteries and central nervous system, see https://bit.ly/3q7twYu, which are involved in the blood supply to the tympanic membrane and ultimately the brain. Whereas smartwatches have muscles, movement when exercising and sweat to negotiate, the consequence of this is that the watch does not fit tightly which can lead to erroneous measurement output.

Biometric Sensors

Hearables are classed as any device which hangs on or goes into the ear and includes microprocessors for advanced functions. These devices provide a number of facilities and as you would expect the main one is listening to music. But also allow the users to mix the music with the sounds going on around them. In most situations we want to put headphones on to provide some escape from reality, but, there are instances when we require situational awareness, for example, when we are out and about near traffic or waiting for a flight and need to hear important announcements or even at work where we need to communicate with colleagues. The company Nuhera has developed hearables that allow users to do just this and they call this augmented hearing. Further, the hearables also allow for a kind of selective noise cancelling, for example you could be on a noisy bus and are trying to have a conversation with another passenger but are struggling to hear what they are saying, but with hearables you can selectively cancel the noise and enhance the speech, in a similar manner to how our ear can filter out what is going on around us when we are at a

party for example, a phenomenon called the cocktail party effect. Other requirements for hearables in an industrial setting may also be to provide passive and active hearing protection to relevant standards, but at the same time allow situational awareness and the ability to communicate with colleagues, one such product that features this is the Novo Natural Vario which provides passive and active attenuation and situational awareness to allow communication, but also provide hearing protection and will be available from Canford very shortly.

Blurring of Lines between Hearing Aids and Earphones

The NHS in England have now followed the lead of Scotland and created an Audiological equipment, services and related consumables framework with a hearable related category. This allows patients with mild to moderate hearing problems to access these devices providing evidence that hearables are more than just a gimmick, but actually a means to help people with hearing problems and lessen the stigma of using hearing aids. Developments are underway so that in the future hearables will be able to measure the amount of oxygen in your blood using infrared light to facilitate a blood oxygen saturation measure known as SpO2. This can be useful for surveying lung conditions, sleep apnea and individuals with cardiac problems. Infrared light can also measure pulse and blood pressure. With blood pressure providing an indication of the users health and can provide an indication of their stress levels..

Machine Learning

The use of blood pressure, oxygen saturation and heart rate can not only be used to monitor the user’s health, but can also be combined with the interaction of everyday tasks. For example the hearable could detect a sudden increase in heart rate and blood pressure relating to increased mental effort when trying to hear a friend for example in a noisy room, from previous encounters with your friend the device will have learned the audio profile of their speech so will turn down the rest of the chatter and focus only on your friends voice. Hearables will be able to carry out the aforementioned tasks utilising machine learning, this will also allow them to learn from your vital signs what your baseline vital functions are. From this they will then be able to detect changes in your health and possibly even the onset of illness. For example IBM https:// ibm.co/2ZYIgxV found that they could predict the onset of schizophrenia with 83% accuracy from speech patterns of at-risk patients, other research has found that with the use of a speech fingerprint it could be used to detect the early onset of coronary disease or Parkinson’s disease, see https:// bit.ly/2YdYQJk. In the future these detection methods could be incorporated into hearables. Mobile phones are an ideal platform to run high performance machine learning algorithms or with further development of fast 5G mobile phone connections run algorithms in the cloud. At the moment users of hearables have to manually adjust the settings to suit, but future developments could provide augmentation of an environment utilising Google maps and GPS. This could for example provide a personalized experience which could also include binaural rendering using the listeners own personal head related transfer function (PHRTF), which is essentially how the listeners head, pinna and torso affect the impinging soundwave, this could be used so that sounds can be convincingly localised around the listener and movements of the head would be tracked so that sounds stay in the correct positions. Currently Apple AirPods pro can provide head tracking and Apple’s version of immersive audio when used with supported content like Apple Music. Machine learning could also be used to programme the hearables to remove unwanted loud impulsive sounds.

Sound Personalisation

As we age our hearing naturally deteriorates whether we look after it or not through a process called presbycusis, but hearing can also be damaged from short or prolonged exposure to noise or loud music. As a result of this we all hear differently; a company called Mimi has a unique

sound personalisation algorithm that measures your hearing function using an app which is run on a smartphone to determine how well you hear certain sounds. Using a sequence of tones played into your ear, a small sensitive microphone measures the response coming back from the cochlea. These responses are known as otoacoustic emissions and along with pure tone threshold, which measures the quietest tone that you can hear, can assist in creating a profile of your hearing health. Mimi also incorporate a further test which is called the masked threshold test; this tests what the quietest tone a listener can hear in the presence of noise which is used to gauge how well the users can hear someone talking to them in a noisy room. This information can then be used to tailor the sound output from the earplugs for music, enhancing hearing and listening in busy soundscapes.

Wire Free

All Hearables are cable free and rely on Bluetooth for connection to devices which is good for convenience but what about sound quality? Bluetooth connections utilise lossy compression to stream music from device to earphones, in a similar manner to that of the MP3 format which utilises perceptual coding, cleverly removing information that the ear cannot pick up. The baseline codec for Bluetooth standard audio is SBC (subband coding) this breaks the signal into a number of different frequency bands and processes these separately based on the energy contained in each of the bands, it then uses a psychoacoustic model to create masking thresholds, which is essentially how much a specific frequency can be heard in the presence of another frequency in order to discard information that the ear cannot hear. The SBC codec was superseded in 2020 and the Bluetooth standard now uses LC3 (low complexity communications codec), a codec developed by Fraunhofer IIS and Ericsson, LC3 is said to provide improved audio quality over the SBC codec. Although SBC and LC3 are now the baseline for Bluetooth audio, however manufacturers of hearables are free to develop their own codecs to suit. For example the Aptx codec from Qualcomm is the most common and there are several variants of this codec: Aptx 352 Kbps Aptx HD 576 Kbps Aptx Adaptive 270-420 Kbps Aptx Lossless 120Kbps- >1Mbps The most recent iteration of the Aptx codec range is the Aptx Lossless, this is claimed to provide a bit identical 16bit 44.1kHz CD playback over Bluetooth dependent on RF conditions in the listening environment, whereas the previous iterations could not provide this.

Many Features in a Small Package

To cater for hearables and other connected technologies the classic Bluetooth which has been in use for at least two decades has recently been updated. The classic Bluetooth handles 79 channels in the 2.4 GHz spectrum and has been used exclusively for point to point streaming between smart speakers, headphones and in-car audio. But to cope with the demands of future technologies Bluetooth LE has been enhanced to provide low power audio; this will become more relevant with future developments in devices like hearables. For example, it will allow a single pair of hearables to connect to several devices at once without the need to change connections and will allow switching between them with less artefacts, stream audio from these devices allowing you to interact with Google Alexa, listen to music and make a phone call. It will also allow Bluetooth to be used to broadcast audio to multiple hearing aid users within a room, say for example in the cinema. Bluetooth LE audio is far more efficient than Bluetooth using SBC coding, a good audio comparison of SBC and LC3 can be heard https://bit.ly/3wfH19j, as a result battery and processor size can be reduced without compromising on powering and signal processing which is an ideal scenario for the future development of hearables and their functions.