Inaudible Radio

With increasing disturbances in our surroundings, Swedish households are recommended to have a battery-powered FM-radio receiver at hand.  Swedish Radio P4 is the national emergency channel and can broadcast even during power outages when internet and cell towers fail.

However, if you cannot hear the radio broadcast, you will receive no information.

This project offers a way to alert and inform Sweden's 10,000 deaf people in a crisis. It also supports the 1.5 million hard of hearing citizens, many of whom use electronic hearing aids.

The main device is automatically tuned to the local SR P4 station and can be remotely triggered by emergency broadcasts. The broadcast is transcribed to text by a built-in and fully offline speech recognition model. Although Swedish Sign Language is the native language for many deaf users, text with illustrations is used for efficiency in both power consumption and communication. This enables the use of an ePaper display that retains messages even when off. Outside of emergencies, the device functions as an alarm clock with a vibrating puck to wake the user. It runs on power from a charging port, two sets of removable batteries, and a hand crank. To alert users during the day, two more FM-receiving devices are proposed: one light-based, for indoor use and doubling as a headlamp. The other vibration-based, for use outside the home when mobile alerts can't be relied on.

Informed by discussions with users and experts, including employees of Swedish Radio, this concept is designed to be implementable using current technology and infrastructure.