Patent Revealed - Goodix Technology's Headphone Wearing Detection Solution

This patent of Goodix Technology obtains the detection data of the capacitive sensor in the earphone, uses a preset linear relationship to obtain linear combination data, and then judges whether the wearing method of the earphone has changed based on the linear combination data. It can effectively prevent the wearable device from getting wet or sweaty, and improve the accuracy of wear detection of the wearable device!

On April 2, Goodix Technology announced that its in-ear detection and touch 2-in-1 solution won the 2020 Edison Award. 

Goodix's in-ear detection and touch 2-in-1 solution can be widely used in various forms of smart headphones, such as TWS, neck-hanging and head-mounted. The in-ear detection function can be realized without opening holes in the headphones, helping the headphones to actively identify the wearing status and cooperate with the mobile phone to control applications such as music playback and phone ringing, thereby reducing the power consumption of the headphones and extending the battery life. At the same time, it supports touch gestures such as clicking or sliding on the surface of the headphones to control the headphones, bringing consumers a smarter and more convenient human-computer interaction and smooth listening experience.

Due to the portability and diverse functions of wearable devices, more and more users are accustomed to using wearable devices to achieve corresponding functions. With the popularity of wearable devices, people pay more and more attention to the battery life of wearable devices. In order to ensure the effective battery life of wearable devices and provide services for as long as possible, the application of the wearable device can be stopped when not being worn, and the application of the wearable device can be turned on when being worn.

However, the accuracy of wearable device wearing detection when performing headphone wearing detection in existing solutions is not high, especially when the outside of the wearable device is stained with water or sweat, it is easy to make misjudgments such as wrong wearing or wrong falling off during wearing detection.

In response to these issues, Goodix Technology applied for an invention patent entitled "Wearing detection method, device, wearable device and storage medium" (application number: 201880002958.0) on December 26, 2018, and the applicant was Shenzhen Goodix Technology Co., Ltd.

Based on the information currently disclosed in the patent, let's take a look at this headphone wearing detection method.

As shown in the above figure, this is a schematic diagram of the appearance of the earphone of the patent invention, which includes an earphone body 11, an earphone handle 12, a control area 121 and an audio output interface 111. The control area has physical control buttons or a touch panel that can be touched to receive input control instructions to control the operation of the earphone, such as adjusting the volume, starting playback, pausing playback, fast forward playback, rewind playback, and any other operations.

In order to better interact with users, for example, to complete intelligent wearing detection, the headset can automatically stop playing music when the user takes off the headset, and can automatically connect to Bluetooth and play music when the user puts on the headset. Intelligent operations such as automatic Bluetooth connection and music playing, the headset is also equipped with sensors for detecting user behavior, such as distance detection sensors near the earphone handle and near the audio output interface.

In this way, when the distance between the playback output interface and the user's ear is greater than a preset threshold, it can be determined whether the earphones have fallen off or other behaviors. The patent figuratively refers to the sensor set in the earphones as a wearing detection sensor or a wearing sensor, which is a capacitive sensor, that is, the data it detects is capacitive data.

Let's take a look at how this headset completes wearing detection, as shown in the flowchart below.

The above figure is a flow chart of the wearing detection method of the earphone. First, the detection data of the capacitive sensors at at least two positions are obtained, that is, the wearing detection sensors set in the earphone mentioned above. The capacitive sensor at each position can transmit the detection signal to the analog front end (AFE) circuit connected to the sensor at each position in the earphone, and then the detected signal is transmitted to the analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and the ADC converts the detection signal to obtain a digital signal, namely the detection data.

Secondly, based on the detection data of the capacitive sensors at at least two positions, a preset linear relationship is used to obtain linear combination data. Based on this linear combination data, it is determined whether an operation behavior that changes the preset initial state of the earphones is detected, such as whether the earphones are put on or taken off by the user and any accidental falling off that may occur.

Finally, if such an operation behavior is detected, it can be determined that the state of the headset is changing, so operations such as Bluetooth connection and automatic stop of sound playback need to be performed. If no operation behavior is detected, the original state can be maintained.

It can be inferred that such detection behavior occurs when the sensor data changes. Therefore, the sensor must keep working while the music is playing, which will inevitably lead to power consumption. A very important point about Bluetooth headsets is to control their power consumption to extend the usage time, but the patent does not give relevant power consumption instructions.

The above is the headphone wearing detection method invented by Goodix Technology. By obtaining the detection data of the capacitive sensor in the headphone, a preset linear relationship is used to obtain linear combination data, and then based on the linear combination data, it is determined whether the wearing method of the headphone has changed. This can effectively prevent the wearable device from getting wet, sweaty, etc., and improve the accuracy of wearable device wearing detection!