Wearable Photonic Artificial Throat for Silent Communication and Speech Recognition

Abstract

Advocating for the voices of the disabled, particularly through wearable artificial throats, has garnered significant attention recently. Such devices necessitate sensors with stretchability, high sensitivity, and excellent skin conformability. In this study, an intelligent photonic artificial throat has been developed. It features a sandwich-structured optical fiber sensor encapsulated in Dragon Skin 20, which has an elastic modulus similar to human tissue and is integrated with sensitivity-enhancing rings and fabric for enhanced wearability. With ultrafast response (response time: 10 ms, recovery time: 32 ms) and high sensitivity (1.92 μW/mN), it detects throat area vibrations and muscle contractions, accurately identifying tones in Mandarin, vowels, words, and sentences in English, achieving accurate bilingual detection. It also distinguishes animal sounds (horse neighing and cuckoo's call) and pop songs when mounted on speakers. Furthermore, the artificial throat can accurately detect subtle movements of the head and neck, and by combining nodding actions with the MORSE code, silent communication between individuals has been successfully achieved. Integrated with an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm, it recognizes tones (97.50%), vowel letters (97.00%), common words (98.00%) and sentences (96.52%), opening prospects for biomedical applications, language education, speech recognition, motion monitoring, and more.