Earbud with facial micromovement detection capabilities
AssigneeQ (Cue) Ltd.
InventorYonatan Wexler
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A multifunctional earpiece comprising an ear-mountable housing, a speaker integrated with the ear-mountable housing for presenting sound, a light source integrated with the ear-mountable housing for projecting light toward skin of the wearer's face, a light detector integrated with the ear-mountable housing and configured to receive reflections from the skin corresponding to facial skin micromovements indicative of prevocalized words of the wearer, and wherein the multifunctional earpiece is configured to simultaneously present the sound through the speaker, project the light toward the skin, and detect the received reflections indicative of the prevocalized words.
Claims20
A multifunctional earpiece, comprising:
- an ear-mountable housing;
- a speaker integrated with the ear-mountable housing for presenting sound;
- a light source integrated with the ear-mountable housing for projecting light toward skin of the wearer's face;
- a light detector integrated with the ear-mountable housing and configured to receive reflections from the skin corresponding to facial skin micromovements indicative of prevocalized words of the wearer, the light detector including one or more multi-pixel sensors for enabling production of at least one image providing spatial information beyond a single point;
- and
- wherein the multifunctional earpiece is configured to simultaneously present the sound through the speaker, project the light toward the skin, and use image processing on the produced at least one image to determine the prevocalized words.
A method for operating a multifunctional earpiece, the method comprising:
- operating a speaker integrated with an ear-mountable housing associated with the multifunctional earpiece for presenting sound;
- operating a light source integrated with the ear-mountable housing for projecting light toward skin of the wearer's face;
- operating a light detector integrated with the ear-mountable housing and configured to receive reflections from the skin corresponding to facial skin micromovements indicative of prevocalized words of the wearer, the light detector including one or more multi-pixel sensors for enabling production of at least one image providing spatial information beyond a single point;
- and
- simultaneously presenting the sound through the speaker, projecting the light toward the skin, and using image processing on the produced at least one image to determine the prevocalized words.
A non-transitory computer readable medium containing instructions that when executed by at least one processor cause the at least one processor to perform operations for operating a multifunctional earpiece, the operations comprising:
- operating a speaker integrated with an ear-mountable housing associated with the multifunctional earpiece for presenting sound;
- operating a light source integrated with the ear-mountable housing for projecting light toward skin of the wearer's face;
- operating a light detector integrated with the ear-mountable housing and configured to receive reflections from the skin corresponding to facial skin micromovements indicative of prevocalized words of the wearer, the light detector including one or more multi-pixel sensors for enabling production of at least one image providing spatial information beyond a single point;
- and
- simultaneously presenting the sound through the speaker, projecting the light toward the skin, and using image processing on the produced at least one image to determine the prevocalized words.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.