Improvement in PZT Ceramic Vibrator Low Frequency Of Generated Sound for Using PZT Ceramic Vibrator As a Sound Source for an Artificial Larynx
Katsutoshi Ooe, Toshio Fukuda, Fumihito Arai · Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics · 2003
Speech production substitutes to reconstruct speech functions have been developed and used practically to vocalize speech of those who have lost voice functions, but have problems. We focused on PZT ceramic vibrators as a sound source for an artificial larynx. We first produced the artificial larynx, which uses PZT ceramic vibrator; and then evaluated its performance. The voice of the power spectrum of the artificial larynx user is similar to that of the speaking person's voice. The vocalized sound of the artificial larynx user shows good characteristics at format frequency, which is important for vowel discrimination. The resonant frequency of PZT ceramic vibrator is high, however and it is difficult to generate sound near 125Hz for PZT ceramic vibrators. We studied how to lower the frequency of generated sound by using added mass.