Augmentation of toothbrush by modulating sounds resulting from brushing

Authors:
Taku Hachisu;Hiroyuki Kajimoto
Affiliations:
The University of Electro-Communications, Chofu, Tokyo, Japan,JSPS Research, Japan;The University of Electro-Communications, Chofu, Tokyo, Japan,Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan
Venue:
ACE'12 Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment
Year:
2012

Citing 6
Cited 0

Integrating Multimodal Information about Surface Texture via a Probe: Relative Contributions of Haptic and Touch-Produced Sound Sources

HAPTICS '02 Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems
Food Simulator: A Haptic Interface for Biting

VR '04 Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality 2004
Lifestyle Ubiquitous Gaming: Making Daily Lives More Plesurable

RTCSA '07 Proceedings of the 13th IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications
Playful toothbrush: ubicomp technology for teaching tooth brushing to kindergarten children

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Straw-Like User Interface (II): A New Method of Presenting Auditory Sensations for a More Natural Experience

EuroHaptics '08 Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Haptics: Perception, Devices and Scenarios
Chewing jockey: augmented food texture by using sound based on the cross-modal effect

Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Brushing teeth is a daily habit to maintain oral hygiene, including the maintenance of oral cleanliness and prevention of caries and periodontal disease. However, tooth brushing is often not carried out correctly or forgotten because the task is boring. Although several works have contributed to improving brushing performance and motivation, the feedback seems to be very remote from the brushing itself, i.e., not intuitive. In this study, we establish two objectives to deal with these issues. The first is not to present information on a visual display, but to augment the ordinary tooth brushing experience consisting of haptic and auditory sensations, while the other is to design the modulation so that users feel as if their teeth are gradually becoming cleaner, thereby providing the necessary motivation. To achieve these aims, we propose a novel approach to augment the tooth brushing experience by modulating the brushing sounds to make tooth brushing entertaining in an intuitive manner. A microphone embedded in the toothbrush records the brushing sounds, which are presented to users after being modified by a PC. In the experiment, we demonstrate that increasing the sound gain and manipulating the frequency can control the overall impression of brushing by giving a sense of comfort and accomplishment.