Highway construction workers are regularly exposed to loud and complex noise environments from equipment, tools, and nearby traffic. While hearing protection equipment (HPE) is essential for preventing hearing loss, it often blocks important warning sounds—such as backup alarms or vehicle intrusion alerts—that are vital for worker safety. This tradeoff leads many workers to avoid using HPE, putting them at greater risk of both hearing damage and serious accidents.

The objective of this project was to investigate a new sound filtering system for hearing protection equipment using artifical intelligence (AI) that can distinguish and attenuate undesired signals while enhancing safety-critical ones.

The outcome of this research is a novel AI-Augmented Hearing Protection (AI-AHP) device, designed to address the persistent safety challenge of protecting highway construction workers exposed to loud, complex, and unpredictable noise environments. Unlike conventional hearing protection equipment that indiscriminately attenuates all sounds, the AI-AHP device introduces a transformative capability: selective noise filtering that suppresses unwanted noise while preserving or amplifying safety-critical signals, such as backup alarms and intrusion warnings.

The final report is available here.