Patent attributes
Head-mounted accessories for surgeons and medical/dental practitioners are equipped with no-touch, hands-free controls. A voice-activated headlamp includes a controller operative to send a signal to control a light source in accordance with a voice command received through an integrated or remote microphone. The voice command and control may be speaker-dependent or speaker-independent, and the head-mounted unit may include an interface to a computer for voice-command training or other purposes. The head-mounted unit includes a memory for storing the voice commands. The invention may be used to control other medical/dental accessories such as a head-mounted video camera, in which case the controller is further operative to at least turn the video camera ON or OFF. More preferably, a controller is additionally operative to control the focus or zoom of the video camera in accordance with a voice command.