Spiraled Acoustic Waveguide Earpiece for Compact Hands-Free Design
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional earpieces with hollow elongated members for acoustic waveguides are bulky due to their linear dimensions, compromising user comfort and concealment, especially when used as 'hands-free' devices for voice or speech recognition.
Innovation Solution
An earpiece design featuring a hollow elongated member with a nonlinear, spiraled path that functions as an acoustic waveguide, allowing for reduced overall size while maintaining acoustic functionality by amplifying or attenuating specific frequencies, thus enhancing comfort and concealment.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Volume of moving object
If a linear hollow elongated member is used as an acoustic waveguide, then acoustic functionality is maintained, but the earpiece size becomes large
Solution Approach 1:
The hollow elongated member is transformed from a linear configuration to a spiraled curved path, allowing the acoustic waveguide to fit within a compact volume while maintaining its acoustic functionality. The curvature enables the long acoustic pathway to be contained within a small earpiece housing.
Solution Approach 2:
The linear hollow elongated member is reconfigured into a three-dimensional spiraled path, utilizing spatial dimensions more efficiently. This dimensional transformation allows the acoustic waveguide to achieve the required acoustic path length within a reduced overall volume by exploiting the third dimension.
2Reliability
If the hollow elongated member is made longer to improve acoustic waveguide functionality, then acoustic performance is enhanced, but the earpiece housing must be larger
Solution Approach 1:
The hollow elongated member is configured in a spiraled curved path rather than a straight line, allowing the acoustic waveguide to achieve sufficient length for proper acoustic functionality while the curved configuration contains it within a compact housing, reducing the overall length of the earpiece.
Solution Approach 2:
The hollow elongated member is nested within the earpiece housing in a spiraled configuration, allowing the longer acoustic pathway to be contained within the boundaries of a smaller housing, effectively nesting the extended acoustic path within the compact form factor.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The spiraled acoustic pathway reduces the earpiece's size without compromising acoustic performance, providing increased comfort and suitability for 'hands-free' use in communication, voice recognition, and speech recognition applications.
Implementation Method 1
The hollow elongated member may function as an acoustic waveguide. As such, the diameter and length of the hollow elongated member are selected so that audio signals in a desired frequency range (e.g., the frequency range associated with human speech) may be amplified while other frequencies may be attenuated.
Data Source
AI summary
An earpiece may be used to detect sounds from an ear canal of a user. The earpiece may include a microphone assembly and an acoustic pathway that is at least partially defined by a hollow elongated member having a nonlinear portion following a spiraled path. The acoustic pathway fluidly couples the microphone assembly with an ear canal of the user when the earpiece is positioned with respect to the ear of the user. Sounds produced by the user travel from the ear canal through the acoustic pathway for detection by the microphone assembly. Also, the hollow elongated member behaves as an acoustic waveguide to amplify a desired frequency and/or attenuate other, less desirable, frequencies of the sounds produced by the user.