Abstract
We conducted a case study with one volunteer and a recording setup to detect sounds induced by the actions: jaw clenching, tooth grinding, reading, eating, and drinking. The setup consisted of two in-ear microphones, where the left ear was semi-occluded with a commercially available earpiece and the right ear was occluded with a mouldable silicon ear piece. Investigations in the time and frequency domains demonstrated that for behaviors such as eating, tooth grinding, and reading, sounds could be recorded with both sensors. For jaw clenching, however, occluding the ear with a mouldable piece was necessary to enable its detection. This can be attributed to the fact that the mouldable ear piece sealed the ear canal and isolated it from the environment, resulting in a detectable change in pressure. In conclusion, our work suggests that detecting behaviors such as eating, grinding, reading with a semi-occluded ear is possible, whereas, behaviors such as clenching require the complete occlusion of the ear if the activity should be easily detectable. Nevertheless, the latter approach may limit real-world applicability because it hinders the hearing capabilities.
Elisabeth Wilhelm and Georg Rauter both authors contributed equally.
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Acknowledgement
We would like to express our gratitude for the generous financial support provided by the Werner Siemens Foundation. In addition, the author would like to thank Norbert Zenati member of CIAN at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, for his support with developing the graphical user interface.
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Nahhas, M.K., Gerig, N., Türp, J.C., Cattin, P., Wilhelm, E., Rauter, G. (2022). Impact of Ear Occlusion on In-Ear Sounds Generated by Intra-oral Behaviors. In: Rauter, G., Carbone, G., Cattin, P.C., Zam, A., Pisla, D., Riener, R. (eds) New Trends in Medical and Service Robotics. MESROB 2021. Mechanisms and Machine Science, vol 106. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76147-9_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76147-9_16
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