University at Buffalo (UB)
Published October 14, 2022
New Atlas reported on technology bring developed in the lab of Zhanpeng Jin, associate professor of computer science and engineering, that will allow people to talk silently into their smart phones when giving spoken commands.
Hardware-wise, EarCommand consists of an earbud-like device that uses an inward-facing speaker to emit inaudible near-ultrasound signals into the wearer's ear canal, the article says. As those signals are reflected back off the canal's inner surface, their echoes are picked up by an inward-facing microphone. A linked computer analyzes those echoes, utilizing a custom algorithm to determine the deformation of the ear canal, and thus the word spoken.