Apple wants its AirPods products to be able to measure your “jaw health.” The company has filed for a patent for “Jaw Health Metric Using Headphones.”
About the patent filing
The patent filing involves chewing-related health metrics for jaw health. Mastication or chewing is the process of physically breaking down food for digestion. During this process, the muscles of mastication (e.g., masseter, temporalis, medial pterygoid, lateral pterygoid, etc.) as well as the mandibular nerves facilitate chewing by elevating the lower jaw or mandible to repeatedly bring the teeth of a user into intermittent contact. What’s more, the temporomandibular joint, which connects the lower jaw or mandible to the temporal bone of the skull, may experience significant pressure during mastication or chewing.
Apple’s patent filing involves a jaw health system that determines a jaw health metric based on user data (e.g., first-side user data, second-side user data) generated by the sensors of a headphone device (e.g., earbuds). It would allow a user to track their jaw health and potentially take steps to eliminate or at least curtail such activity to attain better overall jaw health.
Summary of the patent filing
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent filing: “Jaw health systems and methods are described in which headphone devices are used to generate metrics related to the jaw health of a user. In one aspect, headphone devices worn on either side of the jaw may each determine the number of bites and chews of a user during an ingestion process and may then generate an imbalance metric. In one aspect, the headphone devices may be used to determine a food or substance toughness during the ingestion process.”
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