Ear-worn reference data collection and annotation for multimodal context-aware hearing instruments.

In this work we present a newly developed ear-worn sensing and annotation device to unobtrusively capture head movements in real life situations. It has been designed in the context of developing multimodal hearing instruments (HIs), but is not limited to this application domain. The ear-worn device captures triaxial acceleration, rate of turn and magnetic field and features a one-button-approach for real-time data annotation through the user. The system runtime is over 5 hours at a sampling rate of 128 Hz. In a user study with 21 participants the device was perceived as comfortable and showed a robust hold at the ear. On the example of head acceleration data we perform unsupervised clustering to demonstrate the benefit of head movements for multimodal HIs. We believe the novel technology will help to push the boundaries of HI technology.