Development of Voice Pitch Control System Using Two Dimensional Tactile Display for the Deafblind or the Hearing Impaired Persons

Deafblind or the hearing impaired persons have great difficulty with controlling their voice pitch because they cannot perceive own voice. In particular, when singing it is very difficult for them to control their voice pitch because they need take effort to maintain a stable tone. In this research, a voice pitch control system was developed to assist their singing by means of a two dimensional tactile display. The two dimensional tactile display which presents musical notes has 64 piezoelectric vibrators arranged in four rows (16 x 4 rows). A user rests the last joint of an index finger on the tactile display to receive tactile stimuli. The user can then control voice pitch using tactile feedback. In this study, data on the voice pitch of two subjects were measured to calculate interval deviation that was different from voice pitch to a target musical interval.