Communication Aid Using the Actuator for Bone Conduction via Teeth

Mikio MURAMATSU  Yasuhiro OIKAWA  Yoshio YAMASAKI  Junko KUROSAWA 

Publication
A - Abstracts of IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences (Japanese Edition)  Vol.J95-A  No.7  pp.623-630
Publication Date: 2012/07/01
Online ISSN: 1881-0195
Print ISSN: 0913-5707
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Issue on Emerging Technologies in Electronics, Information and Communication)
Category: 
Keyword: 
bone conduction,  communication aid,  threshold of hearing,  sound image localization, 

Full Text(in Japanese): PDF(1.7MB)

Summary: 
The technology using bone conduction is anticipated for the new method of conveying sound in noisy environments. Recently, the technology becomes popular as the devices to listen to music and audio. The bone conduction technology, for example, is used for headphone and mobile headset. Moreover, there is the hearing aid equipped with bone conduction actuator and the hearing aid is used by people with hearing loss. The bone conduction actuator is generally attached to mastoid and antilobium. On the other hand, a tooth is regarded as bare bone. The bone conduction sound via teeth is considered to be efficient method of transferring sound signal without passing through skin. In this study, we make a proposal on communication aid focused on bone conduction via teeth. We made the giant magnetostrictive material actuator for bone conduction via teeth. Moreover, we conduct experiments in threshold of hearing and sound image localization using the actuators. In the result, we verified that the actuator is able to be efficient device for communication aid.