Noise-canceling robots to 'mute' loud conversations in cafe | What if we told you that we can actually silence a noisy table right next to us in a café?
The smart speaker uses advanced deep-learning algorithms to detect loud locations in a room.
Noise-canceling robots to 'mute' loud conversations in cafe | What if we told you that we can actually silence a noisy table right next to us in a café?::undefined
I've always thought phase cancellation technology could potentially be crazy revolutionary. Seems these guys know what they're doing, but the real challenges come with high decibel levels if I remember right.
If you tried to phase cancel out the sound of a jet engine, it would work and you wouldn't hear it, but you could also have easily just burst your eardrums too, because the sound pressure level is still present, even if the actual sound is inaudible. It's a crazy phenomena.
Edit: the sound pressure level IS cancelled out by destructive wave interference, but if this is knocked even by a matter of milliseconds, the wave is doubled and that's not good for anyone.
Also, on retrospect, phenomena was poor word choice. It's physics.
The waves are canceled (i.e. gone) until something goes wrong. You could end up accidentally causing constructive interference, in which case you my double the sound's amplitude.
Yes, sorry, I didn't phrase that well at all. The sound pressure is actually cancelled out, but with the hypothetical example of the jet engine, anything going wrong could double the dB level instead of cancelling, and because we're talking milliseconds difference, it would be quite easy to go wrong in this sense.
Besides what you mention, I have my reservations about 'crazy revolutionary'. If I remember correctly, noise cancelling only works in one very concentrated spot where the waves are measured and cancelled out. If you move a couple of inches, the cancellation isn't perfect anymore and does practically nothing. That's why ANC headphones work well (always right by your ear) but any other open application seems implausible to me.
Absolutely, this is spot on, but if they can find ways to work around this like with these microphone swarms they're proposing, then there could be a lot more applications for it. Some quite scary.
You're right. Without a demonstration I don't believe it works. Could be a misunderstanding on the part of the author trying to interpret what the inventors are saying...
Yes when the path between the noise and the noise canceling is out of phase the sound will be lower when they are in phase it will be amplified. Their canceling speakers will need to be very directional to stop this from happening
As an autistic person this technology could actually allow me to access the community without being overwhelmed. This is revolutionary and would change my life.
Saw the thumbnail and thought those were W40K minis and "muting the next table" would be everybody leaving the café as soon as you pull out some awesome orks and a measuring tape.
Seems soooo much more complex than simply using regular noise canceling technology which we've had for ages now. In my previous company it was amazing how well it worked. You could be maybe 5 feet away from someone you could hear them perfectly fine, but move 10 feet away and everything was just muted down. One day we had some electrical problems and the system was down, and that's when you really could notice how well the system worked because you could hear people all the way from the other side of the building when before when the system was running those noises were totally gone.
Most office centers these days pipe in low-dB white noise to mitigate some of the chaotic noises of office work. Unfortunately if you're the kind of person with a neurodivergence that makes you sensitive to sensory overload this could be one of the reasons office spaces make you feel so exhausted 😃
The thing is, we dont generally needed the noisy table muted, we just need it reduced in volume enough at our own table so we are able to carry out a normal conversation
The title is false. They are only microphones where a third party could tune into different conversations happening at a single table. This particular technology isn't there yet to do noise cancelling on a room scale with specific zones.
Researchers plan to eventually make microphone robots that can move around rooms, instead of being limited to tables. The team is also investigating whether the speakers can emit sounds that allow for real-world mute and active zones, so people in different parts of a room can hear different audio. The current study is another step toward science fiction technologies, such as the “cone of silence” in “Get Smart” and “Dune,” the authors write.
As sounds is simply vibrations through a medium, it would be cool if you could set up some sort of box with a device in each corner where they make some sort of wall that disrupts any sound wave passing through. Like some sort of sci-fi privacy barrier. Might still hear things but wouldn't hear words and whatnot.
The cafes would not want that because guests are expected to leave and make room for new ones after some time. That's also why they crank up the music in these places.