Systems for determining brushing parameters in an electric toothbrush
AssigneeKoninklijke Philips N.V.
InventorTaylor Bevis
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A brush head (12), an electric toothbrush (10), and a method of operating an electric toothbrush. The electric toothbrush (10) includes bristles extending from a base structure. A plurality of tufts (20) are formed as separate groups of the bristles (23) bundled together. A sensor assembly (28) is configured to generate, for each of the tufts, a signal representative of a force applied to each of the tufts. A controller (18) is configured to generate a tuft signature representing a distribution of the force applied to each of the tufts. This tuft signature may then be classified by appropriate algorithms to determine brushing parameters, such as applied pressure, angle, and the location in the user's mouth.
Claims13
A method of operating an electric toothbrush, comprising:
- (a) receiving data indicative of a force on each of a plurality of tufts of a brush head of the electric toothbrush;
- (b) generating, for each of the tufts, a signal representative of the force individually applied to each of the tufts;
- and
- (c) generating a tuft signature representing a distribution of the force applied to the tufts,
- wherein the steps a, b and c are repeated in a training process with the brush head located at a plurality of locations within a user's mouth, thereby generating a plurality of training tuft signatures;
- and
- associating each of the plurality of training tuft signatures to the corresponding location in a user's mouth.
A method of determining location of a brush head within a user's mouth comprising
- receiving data indicative of a force on each of a plurality of tufts of a brush head of the electric toothbrush;
- generating, for each of the tufts, a signal representative of the force individually applied to each of the tufts;
- generating a tuft signature representing a distribution of the force applied to the tufts;
- and
- comparing the tuft signature to a mouth map which correlates tuft signatures to locations.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.