It’s that time again, dear readers! Back in March, the SAI Blog kicked off our SAI Spotlight series with a profile on SAI’s long-standing partnership with Silentium. Each spotlight will zoom in on one of Shively Acoustics International’s (SAI) numerous industry collaborations in order to showcase our areas of expertise in action. In SAI Spotlight #2, we shine the light on developer of consumer wellness wearables Apollo Neuroscience (Pittsburgh, PA; www.apolloneuro.com).

SAI and Apollo Neuro

Founded only less than a decade ago in 2016, Apollo Neuroscience — better known as Apollo Neuro — specializes in wearable technology aimed at improving mental health and overall wellness, with stress reduction being one of the main targets. At the center of all this is the company’s signature product, the Apollo Wearable, a device that you might mistake for a simple wristwatch at first glance. Improving the existing design of the Apollo Wearable was the initial assignment given to Shively Acoustics, but the project soon took off and has turned into so much more.

SAI’s relationship with Apollo Neuro first launched 🚀 in October 2021, when our president Roger Shively first met with the Apollo team — shout-out to Doug Zatezalo, John Maholtz, Dave Rubin, and Aureliano Pisa — to discuss their concerns and desires for how to improve the Wearable’s design and, more specifically, the performance of the embedded haptic transducer that does the device’s heavy lifting. In particular, Apollo Neuro were interested in achieving lower resonance and greater, more efficient output. While we at SAI may be better known for work in Audio, this illustrates just how applicable our expertise can be – after all, it’s a transducer that lies at the heart of a loudspeaker.

Over the following two months, we began analyzing Apollo Neuro’s haptic design to understand its limitations — what it could and could not do, what the transducer inherently was. As part of this, SAI helped in taking the first quantitative measurements of the transducer, as up until then, Apollo had gone mostly by feel. After some initial testing of the physical haptic transducer itself, we did what we do best and recreated its design in a COMSOL simulation, where we could reproduce its performance and optimize it in a virtual environment.

Parallel to this, the other task for SAI at the beginning was to assess if there was a better haptic transducer already on the market that could be used to replace Apollo’s — there was not.

One of the things that quickly became apparent from our testing and modeling was that the transducer’s inherent design was the obstacle to achieving better efficiency of the Wearable. Take a look at your wrist, dear readers, and imagine an axis that runs side to side, across the width of your wrist. Apollo’s existing transducer design was such that it vibrated along this axis, sending its vibrations everywhere but into the wearer’s wrist and body. To do that, it would need to vibrate along a wholly different imaginary axis, one that goes through your wrist, perpendicular to it. And to do that, a wholly different design of the transducer would be needed.

And so we did just that, creating and optimizing a completely new model for the haptic transducer virtually in COMSOL that we could later build as a physical prototype. This was, in essence, product development, and this redesign phase began in spring 2022, and by June of that year, the design was finalized, and prototyping began.

Again, the first crucial difference of the SAI design was changing the axis of displacement — getting the haptic device to vibrate up and down rather than side to side. As simple as that may sound, this change allowed for a structure in the haptic transducer that provided not only greater output from the device, but also the desired lower resonance: SAI managed to halve the existing frequency of 80 Hz down to 40 Hz.

Prototyping took about half a year, as we conducted more simulations and tests, building a small batch of the new transducers that we popped into the existing wrist apparatus to demonstrate that they did indeed work better, pitting the new design against the old. By November 2022, the Shively Acoustics prototype was finalized and by January of the following year, Apollo Neuro began using samples in assembly testing. And with that, SAI’s job was done.

Well, not quite. First, remember what we said about the SAI prototype being a wholly different, completely new design? We’re not just tooting our own horn — it really is unique. So much so that in April of 2023, an application was made for a patent for the new haptic transducer design, with Roger listed as a co-applicant. If accepted, the achievement will make a fine addition to the other patents that Shively Acoustics holds.

Through the first half of 2023, Apollo enlisted SAI further to leave no stone unturned in terms of optimization. We naturally obliged, running simulations of various box-mounting designs to determine if any other coupling arrangement of the transducer and the wrist device’s box would improve the transmission of the vibrations. Ultimately, these simulations showed that our original design would work the best.

Getting the best possible performance out of the Wearable naturally was the crux of this whole endeavor. That being said — with eyes on consumers — Apollo Neuro was also concerned with the device’s aesthetic, expressing a desire to make it less “clunky” and reduce its size as much as possible. The not-so-subtle goal: get the Apollo Wearable down to the size and shape of something like an Apple watch.

In other words, now that we had the best possible haptic transducer, could it fit into an even smaller box? Sure thing, we said, and got to work on making a thinner version of our transducer that would also maintain optimal size and mass. By November of last year, we had landed on the “sweet spot” as Roger put it, with a version of the transducer that was, among other things, 50% longer (at 35 mm, ideal for a wristwatch) and nearly 20% thinner. Furthermore, the second generation Apollo Wearable is to see its battery and electronics moved out of the box and into the band, leaving just the transducer. Sleek, sleek, sleek!

Since then, SAI has been building more samples for Apollo for testing as they get closer to large-scale production. Which brings us to now, August 2024: Apollo Neuro has asked SAI for help in finding a long-term manufacturer for the new haptic device. The challenge in that, of course, is that no one has ever manufactured such a device before, because it’s — say it with us — wholly different, completely new, and unique 😉.

In fact, this was another reason Apollo came to us in the first place: not only did they need help with the performance and size of their original transducer, but they also had concerns about it even being available in the future, as it was likely their original manufacturer was going to cease production. In looking for stability, Apollo Neuroscience turned to Shively Acoustics International, because that’s what we are: your stable industry partner.

That brings the second SAI Spotlight to a close. The third edition of this now officially recurring series should come out sometime this year. Until it does, visit our Solutions page to get a better idea of who else we’ve worked with in the past.

But before you do: other than an Apollo rocket, what else has been in SAI’s orbit recently?

Webinar announcement and more

We’ve mentioned before that Roger and SAI make up one of the core pillars of the Audio Product Development Alliance (APDA).

It just so happens that we are now only a few days away from the ADPA’s next webinar titled “Success Factors with your Supply Partners: Insights from 16 Years in China” with Dave Lindberg (dB Enterprises), which goes live on August 27 at 11:30am EST. Save the link and date, leave a like 👍, and click the video’s bell🔔to get notified when the webinar is live.

As you can probably tell, the APDA YouTube channel is still getting off its feet — so while you’re at it, pay the channel a visit to subscribe and, again, click the bell 🔔 to receive all future channel notifications. As the APDA continues to grow and establish itself, we are aiming to cover the alliance in more detail in a future blog post — possibly even next month — so keep an eye out!

Meanwhile, if you still haven’t checked out last month’s post about the AES 5th International Conference on Automotive Audio, then do so now. Better yet, you can also read the Vice-Chair’s own account in The Audio Voice #475 (scroll down just a bit), the weekly newsletter from industry magazine and SAI partner audioXpress. Not only that: the magazine’s upcoming October issue (published at the end of September) is set to feature a longer piece about the conference co-authored by Roger and Editor-in-Chief João Martins. For those of you who lamented that Gothenburg couldn’t go on just a few more days, hopefully this can bring you some solace.

Furthermore, in his press capacity for audioXpress, Roger will be heading to the East Coast in October to attend both the COMSOL Conference 2024 Boston (Oct 2-4) and the AES Show 2024 NY (Oct 8-10). He will cover both events for The Audio Voice. Will he see you there?

More recently, our chief has been elsewhere on the road, driving SAI’s business forward, so to speak. Last week, Roger made his way back to southeast Michigan on behalf of partner Silentium, where he sat down for meetings with area automotive OEMs who have selected Silentium as their Active Noise Control (ANC) specialist. The meetings were fruitful, to say the least 😉.

We can also reveal that more projects are planned with Dinaburg Technology, another one of our closest partners. SAI will be lending our expertise to help optimize Dinaburg’s latest loudspeaker prototype using COMSOL simulations in order to demonstrate that the prototype can work on a manufacturing level, and afterward to bring it to market in Automotive.

In fact, looking ahead to the next SAI Spotlight, the Shively Acoustics-Dinaburg relationship is likely to be the topic of the third edition of the series. Finally, we’d like to wish a happy birthday to Mikhail Dinaburg, the company’s founder, who recently celebrated an incredible 90 years on August 8. Three cheers! 🎉🎉🎉

Here our digital ink runs dry once again, so wake us up when September begins. That’s how the song goes, right? ■

Shively Acoustics International — Modern Audio Solutions, Worldwide