What's a micro-hearable?

Computing used to require a room full of machines. Later, a desktop. More recently, smart-phones put powerful computing into the palm of your hand, & smart-watches wrapped it around our wrists. But the next revolution will be computers we place into our heads; capturing our every utterance and whim, connecting us to the cloud, answering to our beckoned calls. And of course, serving as a pipeline tapped directly into our noggins so that our personal data may be pumped straight over to the highest bidder.

Hearables are computers for our ears. Many resemble bluetooth earphones on steroids. Others are becoming more powerful, and enjoy more purposefully designed form-factors. Some are designed to help us sleep better, or diagnose and monitor medical conditions. Some will be equipped with powerful cameras and utilized by the military and police departments. In any event, ear computers are rapidly evolving to become a very big deal; highly specialized, and an increasingly indispensable/inseparable part of our lives–just as smart-phones became in the mid aughts. 

Present state-of-the-art

Apple AirPods, Google Pixelbuds, and Samsung IconX are early examples of simplistic hearables. Such devices, however, barely scratch the surface of what's actually possible with in-ear micro-computing. Moreover, they all suffer key limitations that are hampering mass-adoption, chiefly:

• Large size (they stick outside of the wearer's ears, are are easy to dislodge, often uncomfortable, generally unsightly)

• Limited battery life (typically only three to five hours use)

• Poor sound quality (even if they lasted longer, you wouldn't want to keep listening) 

• Limited functionality (a computer in your ear should do much more than just play music or enable basic telephony)

More advanced hearables are cropping up as well. German company Bragi, for example, produces a comparatively advanced hearable that can not only handle music and telephony, but can monitor your pulse rate. It includes accelerometers and other sensors that assist it in capturing biometric data and enabling a more advanced user interface. Still, overall size, battery life, sound quality, and functionality remain constrained by the limits of traditional engineering and production solutions. 

The bleeding front edge

EAR µBionics is focused on delivering next-generation hearables platforms in astonishingly tiny form factors; between 1/2 and 1/3rd the size of today's hearables. We call them micro-hearables. Some of our ear computers are so small they can literally fit inside the wearer's ear canals nearly invisibly. Simultaneously, our platform is significantly more powerful and yet more power efficient than any other in the world. This is a balancing act so challenging that many industry onlookers believed it was impossible to achieve. 

By spending five full years of focused R&D efforts shrinking size while increasing performance, we've been forced to solve myriad problems (physics, energy consumption, materials science, production/assembly techniques, micro user-interfaces, etc.) that other hearables platforms and manufacturers have yet to even begin to stumble over. Simply put, we are way out on the bleeding front edge.  That's precisely where we feel most comfortable, and a position that's enabled us to amass a growing and powerful IP portfolio.  

Our value proposition

Today, we are licensing our technology and development know-how to innovative players around the globe who see micro-hearables as the most exciting and important computing frontier, and who are well positioned to drive rapid growth in a number of hearables sectors. Our client verticals include:

• streaming content/media companies

• health and med-tech device manufacturers

• hi-fi audio companies.  

• musical instrument manufacturers

• luxury, fashion, and jewelry brands

• military, governmental, and public safety uses

• workplace productivity/training/data-capture

• wireless telecoms and handset manufacturers

• consumer electronics companies

• sports / fitness monitoring and training applications.

We are becoming cyborgs 

In the 1970's, a popular sci-fi TV show called "The Six Million Dollar Man" featured actor Lee Majors as the character "Steve Austin", the world's first "bionic man." Austin's bionic eyesight, a bionic left arm, and a pair of bionic legs imbued him superhuman strength and capabilities. Ear µIcro Bionic's tiny hearables weren't a part of the script 40 years ago — but they certainly could have been. Our micro-hearables hold the potential to make each of us a little bit "bionic." next stop? Implantable hearables!