The Pentagon has agreed to a multimillion dollar contract with a California tech company to provide secure, and essentially invisible, communication devices that are attached to a person’s teeth, Defense One reports.
Sonitus Technologies have created a device called the Molar Mic, which can be clipped onto a person’s back teeth to provide a microphone and “speaker” that would allow the user to communicate without any externally visible equipment.
Sound coming into the device would be transmitted through the bone matter in the jaw and skull before reaching the auditory nerves. Sound going out is relayed through a transmitter on the neck into a radio unit on the operator’s person using near-field magnetic induction, which is similar to Bluetooth, but harder to detect and it can pass through water.
“Essentially, what you are doing is receiving the same type of auditory information that you receive from your ear, except that you are using a new auditory pathway — through your tooth, through your cranial bones — to that auditory nerve. You can hear through your head as if you were hearing through your ear,” said Sonitus Technologies CEO Peter Hadrovic.
Hadrovic added that the experience is similar to the sensation of eating a bowl of crunchy cereal.