JPH04172794A - Device for picking up bone conduction voice at external auditory meatus and talking device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To prevent production of a sense of disorder and of displeasure by providing a mount part of almost a disk shape and a bone conduction microphone section and supporting the bone conduction microphone section to the mount part via an elastic member so that at least a contact part with an externally auditory meatus is in elastic press contact onto a wall of the externally auditory meatus at almost a right angle. CONSTITUTION:A mount part 1 is set to a boat-like ditch C and a bone conduction microphone section 2 is set to a space of an externally auditory meatus A. Thus, the outer circumference of the mount part 1 of almost a disk shape is supported over a wide range of a tragus cartilage B, the entrance of the externally auditory meatus A, and the inner face of the ear shell forming a boat-like ditch C. On the other hand, a tip 2A of the bone conduction microphone section 2 is in contact with the externally auditory meatus in the space of the externally auditory meatus based on an elastic member 13. Thus, the bone conduction microphone section is supported at a position not giving a sense of disorder and a sense of insertion of foreign material while ensuring a sufficient contact area and contact pressure to pick up a bone conduction sound.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a device for picking up bone conduction sound in an external auditory canal, and a communication device using the same.

[Conventional technology]

Conventionally, to transmit voice in noisy places such as coal mining and quarrying sites, airports, construction sites, and sheet metal factories, the conventional methods have been to use unidirectional microphones on the lips, and to use accelerometer vibration pickups on the pharynx or forehead. Many methods are used, such as those used in However, the former unidirectional microphone has a limit in its ability to remove external noise, making it unsuitable for places with intense noise. In addition, since the latter method requires the vibration pickup to be tightly fixed in the pharynx or forehead, the installation is complicated or troublesome, and it is not only unsightly, but also makes the wearer feel uncomfortable while using it. This has the disadvantage that it is extremely uncomfortable and cannot be used for long periods of time.

Therefore, in Japanese Patent Publication No. 53-39763, the applicant of the present application has incorporated a cylindrical shell into an earpiece to be inserted into the external auditory canal of the ear.
We proposed a device that picks up bone-conducted sound vibrations from the wall of the external auditory canal by installing a vibration pickup whose operating direction is approximately perpendicular to the direction of the external auditory canal.

(Problems to be Solved by the Invention) However, in the above-mentioned pickup device, it is difficult to stably hold the earpiece, which is a cylindrical shell, unless it is inserted sufficiently deeply into the external auditory canal. Therefore, if the earpiece is fully inserted, the contact area and contact pressure with the ear canal will increase, which is desirable for improving function, but the earpiece will come into too close contact with the ear canal, causing discomfort and discomfort. In addition, for some people, the contact pressure becomes too high, causing a feeling of pressure or even the entrance of the ear canal.

The present invention solves this problem, and even without inserting the earpiece deep into the ear canal, the contact area and contact pressure with the ear canal can be secured in just the right amount, and the microphone part can be stably held in the mounting part using bone conduction. The primary objective is to provide a device that picks up bone conduction sound in the ear canal.

In addition, other conventional devices have been known that have an earphone section integrated with the cylindrical shell housing a built-in microphone section of the type described above, which allows for telephone calls. . However, in such devices, the microphone section and the earphone section are integrated and placed close to each other.
Sound pressure from the earphone section may leak into the microphone section, and in order to suppress this, methods are used to surround the earphone section with sound-absorbing material or vibration-absorbing material. However, if the ambient noise is large, the sound pressure at the earphones has to be increased, which causes feedback and feedback, so it can only be used when the sound pressure at the earphones is reduced. could not.

In principle, vibration pickup type ear canal microphones cannot absorb air vibrations such as sounds from the earphones or external noises, and the vibration direction of air vibrations such as external noises is perpendicular to the vibration direction of the ear canal microphone. Therefore, the S/N ratio of speech in noise should be high. However, since the shell, which is the case that houses the microphone section and the earphone section, is integrated, the overall shape becomes larger and the vibration absorption area increases. Although it is a pickup type and should have good noise resistance characteristics, it had the disadvantage that the S/N ratio decreased under high noise conditions.
A second object of the present invention is to solve the above-mentioned problems in devices that also include an earphone section and a microphone section and are capable of mutual communication.

[Means to solve the problem]

The first purpose of the above is to provide a substantially disc-shaped attachment part that is accommodated in the space of the navicular fossa formed between the tragus cartilage and the entrance of the external auditory canal, and a mounting part that extends into the external auditory canal so as to be in contact with the external auditory canal wall. a bone conduction microphone section to be inserted, the bone conduction microphone section being held in the mounting section via an elastic member so that at least a portion of the bone conduction microphone section that contacts the external auditory canal comes into elastic contact with the external auditory canal wall from a substantially perpendicular direction; This is achieved by the first invention.

A second object of the present invention is to accommodate an earphone section that transmits sound from the outside inside the mounting section, and a sound conduit of the earphone section opens at a portion of the mounting section facing the external auditory canal. achieved by doing.

[Effect]

In the first aspect of the invention, the mounting portion is first placed in the space of the navicular fossa of the ear, and is supported by the entrance of the external auditory canal and the tragus cartilage. On the other hand, when the microphone part held by the attachment part is inserted into the ear canal to an appropriate depth, it is oriented almost perpendicularly to the ear canal wall surface based on the holding force of the elastic member to easily amplify the vibrations of the ear canal wall. From then on, they began to come into contact with each other in an oppressive manner.

This contact pressure is set to a preferable value depending on the material, dimensions, etc. of the elastic member. As a result, the user can apply just the right amount of contact pressure to the wall of his/her external auditory canal. Note that the contact portion of the bone conduction microphone portion with the wall surface of the external auditory canal is preferably the tip portion of the bone conduction microphone portion from an acoustic standpoint.

Thus, in the device of the present invention, the mounting portion is supported in contact with the navicular fossa and the bone conduction microphone portion is supported in contact with the external auditory canal, and the support is extremely stable at multiple positions in a three-dimensional space.

Furthermore, the disk-shaped mounting portion is supported over a considerable area of its outer periphery.

In the device of the present invention supported in this manner, the bone conduction microphone portion, which is brought into contact with the bone conduction microphone under appropriate pressure, picks up bone conduction sound at the wall of the external auditory canal.

This picked up audio signal is transmitted to the other recipient by a built-in or external transmitter.

Next, in the second invention, the device is attached to the ear canal in the same manner as the first invention device, and the bone conduction microphone section picks up bone conduction sound and receives the sound from the other party as an electrical signal. This is converted into air pressure vibrations in the earphone section and sent into the external auditory canal via the sound pipe. In this way, mutual communication is performed using the bone conduction microphone section and the earphone section. At this time, the bone conduction microphone section is separated from the mounting section in which the earphone section is housed and is acoustically separated, so it does not collect sound from the earphone section. Further, since the bone conduction microphone section is connected to the mounting section through an elastic member, external sound is not transmitted to the bone conduction microphone section via the mounting section.

〔Example〕

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail based on the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a sectional view of a pickup device as a first embodiment of the present invention.

In FIG. 1, A is the external auditory canal, B is the tragus cartilage, and a depressed space called the navicular fossa C is formed between them on the inner surface of the auricle.

The device of this embodiment consists of a mounting section 1 and a bone conduction microphone section 2.

The mounting part 1 has a disc-shaped part 10 with a rounded cross section at the front part, and a hole part 1) is formed at a position offset from the center of the disc-shaped part 10. The mounting portion 1 is made of a relatively hard material such as plastic and is hollow, and the outer circumferential surface of the disc-shaped portion 10 has a shape and size that fits within the space of the navicular fossa C.

In addition, a bone conduction microphone section 2 is provided in the internal space of the mounting section 1.
A circuit section 14 for impedance conversion, etc., is built in to transmit an electric signal received from a receiver to a transmitter (not shown) via a cable 15. The transmitter is usually stored in a user's pocket or the like. In addition, when the receiver is located at a short distance, the circuit section 14 is provided with a small transmitting circuit or the like in addition to the circuit for impedance conversion, etc., so that the signal is transmitted directly from the antenna to the receiver. You can also do that.

The vibration big amplifier element 23 of the bone conduction microphone section 2 has its tip 2A supported within the cylindrical shell 21 by a holder 22 through which signals from the external auditory canal wall are transmitted. A conductor &9!24 is connected which brings an oscillating electrical signal to the circuit section 14. This bone conduction microphone part 2
The internal configuration of the pickup device may be exactly the same as that of a conventional pickup device.

The cylindrical shell 21 of the bone conduction microphone section 2 has the above-mentioned hole 1.
) is connected and held via an elastic member 13 to a circuit section attached to the mounting section 1 at a base section that can pass through the inside.

The material and dimensions of the elastic member 13 are determined so that the external sound collected by the attachment part 1 is not transmitted to the bone conduction microphone part 2 through the disk-shaped part 10, and also to prevent the distal end part 28 of the bone conduction microphone part 2 from being transmitted to the bone conduction microphone part 2. It is set so as to come into elastic contact with the wall surface of the external auditory canal from a substantially perpendicular direction with an appropriate pressure.

The apparatus of this embodiment having such a configuration is used in the following manner.

First, the attachment part 1 is attached to the navicular fossa C, and then the bone conduction microphone part 2 is attached to the navicular fossa C.
is placed within the space of the external auditory canal A. As a result, the outer periphery of the disk-shaped mounting portion 1 is the tragus cartilage B and the external auditory canal A.
It is supported over a wide range at the entrance of the auricle and on the inner surface of the auricle which forms the navicular fossa C therebetween. On the other hand, the bone conduction microphone section 2 is located within the space of the external auditory canal A, and the distal end portion 2A comes into contact with the external auditory canal wall based on the elastic member 13.

In this way, the bone conduction microphone section 2 secures sufficient contact area and contact pressure to pick up bone conduction sound, and is held in a position that does not cause discomfort or a feeling of being blocked.

In this state, the voice spoken by the user is picked up by the bone conduction microphone section 2 as bone conduction voice, and the electrical signal is transmitted from the transmitter to the other recipient via the circuit section 14. When the bone conduction microphone unit 2 performs a pink-up of the bone conduction sound, in this embodiment, even if the external sound is collected by the disc-shaped part 10 of the mounting part 1, the disc-shaped part 10 and the bone conduction microphone part 2 This means that the external sound is not transmitted to the bone conduction microphone section 2 because it is via the elastic member 13 . Furthermore, since the bone conduction microphone section 2 itself is miniaturized and separate from the disk-shaped section 10, its surface area is small and is located deep, so that it hardly picks up external sound.

In this embodiment, an earphone section 3 may also be provided within the disc-shaped section 10, and together with the bone conduction microphone section 2, a telephone communication device capable of transmitting and receiving may be constructed. This earphone section 3 itself is a well-known one (it emits sound from a sound pipe 31 by converting signals received from the outside through a transmitter/receiver into air vibrations, and the above-mentioned sound is emitted from the opening 32 of the mounting section at the part facing the entrance of the ear canal. Sound is sent to the ear canal.

In this case, since the earphone section 3 is configured separately from the tip 2A, which is the pickup section of the bone conduction microphone section 2, the sound from the earphone section does not go around to the bone conduction microphone section 2, and the earphone section 3 is not transmitted to the bone conduction microphone section 2 via the disc-shaped section 10.

Next, FIG. 2 shows a second embodiment of the present invention. In the previous embodiment, the bone conduction microphone section was held on the mounting section by a block-shaped elastic member, but in this embodiment, most of the bone conduction microphone section is covered with a cylindrical elastic member, and the bone conduction microphone section is held by a cylindrical elastic member. The device is characterized in that the bone conduction microphone section is held by a mounting section. In FIG. 2, parts common to those in the first embodiment shown in FIG. 1 are denoted by the same reference numerals, and their explanations will be omitted.

In Fig. 2, the elastic member 13' is a small diameter cylindrical part 13°.
8 and the cylindrical portion 13", the base 13 is formed larger than the 8"
It has ゛B. The cylindrical part 13'A is attached to cover most of the cylindrical shell 21 of the bone conduction microphone part 2 except for the tip 2A, and the base 13'B is attached to the disc-shaped part 10 of the attachment part I. It is being With this configuration, in this embodiment, sound from the earphone section 3 is more reliably prevented from going around to the bone conduction microphone section.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As described above, the present invention is a big amplifier device in which the mounting part is supported in the space of the navicular fossa and the bone conduction microphone part is supported by the wall of the external auditory canal, so the support is three-dimensional and extremely stable. Furthermore, since the bone conduction microphone section is held on the mounting section via the above-mentioned elastic member, the appropriate contact pressure with the external auditory canal can be easily obtained with a simple structure, and the mounting section also prevents external noise. Even if it is spread, it will not be transmitted to the bone conduction microphone section and cause the so-called howling phenomenon. Next, when the earphone section is housed in the mounting section to configure an interactive communication device, the elastic member prevents vibrations of the earphone section from being transmitted to the bone conduction microphone section through the mounting section.

Furthermore, since the bone conduction microphone section can be set at a position apart from the earphone section, the sound pressure of the earphone section will not go around to the bone conduction microphone section.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a cross-sectional view of a device according to a first embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view of a device according to a second embodiment of the present invention. 1・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・ Mounting part 13・
・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・Elastic member 2...
......Bone conduction microphone section 21.
・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・Tubular shell body 3...
・・・・・・・・・・・・Earphone part patent applicant Hiroyo Ono Attorney Patent attorney Toru Fujioka Figure 1 Figure 2

Claims (3)

[Claims] (1) A roughly disc-shaped attachment part that is accommodated in the space of the navicular fossa formed between the tragus cartilage and the entrance of the external auditory canal, and a bone conduction part that is inserted into the external auditory canal so as to be in contact with the external auditory canal wall. and a microphone section, the bone conduction microphone section being held in the mounting section via an elastic member so that at least the portion that contacts the external auditory canal comes into elastic contact with the external auditory canal wall from a substantially perpendicular direction. Device that picks up bone conduction sound (2) The bone conduction microphone section picks up bone conduction sound in the ear canal according to claim (1), wherein the portion of the bone conduction microphone section excluding the contact portion with the wall of the ear canal is at least partially covered with an elastic member. Device. (3) An earphone section for transmitting sound from the outside is housed inside the mounting section of the device for picking up bone conduction sound in the external auditory canal according to claim (1), and the sound conduit of the earphone section is arranged in the mounting section. A communication device having an opening in a portion facing the external auditory canal.