Colgate Palmolive Company

Omron Healthcare Company Ltd.

Mamoru Katano

Hideaki Yoshida

Masashi Kitamura

Hiroshi Nakamori

Sakae Morikawa

Tamaki Ito

Naoki Takeishi

Yuji Asada

Motofumi Nakanishi

Yusuke Kawabe

Yoko Shimose

Toshifumi Matsumoto

In one embodiment, the invention can be a brush unit detachable from a main body unit of an electric toothbrush. The brush unit includes: a light transmitting part included on a front surface of the brush unit, a plurality of tooth cleaning elements extending from the front surface of the brush unit in a pressing direction, wherein the light transmitting part directs more light in a first direction, which intersects the pressing direction, than in the pressing direction; and a light receiving part included on the front surface for receiving light; wherein the light transmitting part and the light receiving part are arranged on opposing sides of the plurality of tooth cleaning elements; and wherein the first direction lies within a plane including both the light transmitting part and the light receiving part.

Electric toothbrush, brush unit, and method for operating an electric toothbrush

An electric toothbrush that detects plaque on the teeth, ensures accurate plaque detection, and performs cleaning of plaque. The electric toothbrush may include a body having a gripping part and a stem with a brush unit detachably coupled to the body. The electric toothbrush may include a light emitting element for emitting light onto the tooth and a light receiving element for receiving light that reflects off of the tooth. A controller may be included to determine an amount of plaque on the tooth based on the amount of reflected light detected. The electric toothbrush may also include a fluid dispensing system that dispenses fluid based on the amount of reflected light detected. In some aspects, the electric toothbrush may operate in multiple oscillation modes, and it may only dispense fluid in some of the modes but not all of the modes.

Electric toothbrush and method for operating an electric toothbrush

An electric toothbrush includes a grip portion, a brush portion on which a replaceable toothbrush is mounted, and an illumination ring between the grip portion and the brush portion. The illumination ring is provided around the toothbrush as an annular structure so that a user can view the illumination ring no matter what angle he/she is holding the toothbrush.

Electric toothbrush with an illumination ring

In one embodiment, the invention can be an electric toothbrush. The electric toothbrush may include a driving module configured to oscillate a brush unit; an acceleration sensor configured to generate an output signal; a signal extraction module configured to extract from the output signal (a) a first signal having a frequency at a first threshold or higher and (b) a second signal having a frequency at a second threshold or lower; a brushing site estimation module configured to estimate a brushing site of the brush unit based on the output signal of the acceleration sensor; and a correction module configured to correct the brushing site estimated by the brushing site estimation module based on an amplitude of the first signal and an amplitude of the second signal.

Electric toothbrush device and method

In one embodiment, the invention can be an electric toothbrush including a trajectory detecting module configured to detect a trajectory of movement of a brush, the trajectory including a plurality of positions; an attitude detecting module configured to detect an attitude of the brush; a site estimating module configured to estimate a brushing site for each of the plurality of positions of the trajectory, each estimated brushing site being based on the trajectory detected by the trajectory detecting module; and a back most tooth detecting module configured to detect a back most tooth based on a change of the attitude detected by the attitude detecting module; wherein the site estimating module is further configured to correct the estimated brushing site for each of the plurality of positions of the trajectory based on the estimated site of the detected back most tooth.

An electric toothbrush includes a grip portion, a brush portion, and a joint arrangement for connecting the two portions. The joint arrangement has an upper cylinder portion and a lower cylinder portion, with an axis of the upper cylinder portion being inclined a predetermined angle with respect to an axis of the lower cylinder portion. The grip portion is connected to the lower cylinder portion and the brush portion is connected to the upper cylinder portion, so that the grip portion and the brush portion are inclined by the predetermined angle.

Electric toothbrush with rigidly connected grip portion and brush portion

An electric toothbrush includes a grip portion, a brush portion on which a replaceable toothbrush is mounted, and an illumination ring between the grip portion and the brush portion. The brush portion is inclined with respect to the grip portion. The illumination ring is provided around the toothbrush, so that a user can view the illumination ring no matter what angle he/she is holding the toothbrush.

An activity meter includes a body movement detecting unit, a display unit, a target activity amount acquiring unit, an accumulated activity amount calculation unit, an excess activity amount calculation unit, a converted value calculation unit that calculates a converted value representing an excess amount of activity by dividing burned calories corresponding to the excess amount of activity by a unit calorie count, where a standard calorie count of a predetermined food is the unit calorie count, and a display operation control unit that controls a display operation of the display unit such that the display unit displays a measurement result using the converted value.

Growing community of inventors

Kyoto, Japan

Mamoru Katano