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?

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.

What if we told you that we can actually silence a noisy table right next to us in a café?

I'd say we almost certainly have different definitions of what 'silence' means.

Forbidden sushi

They're going to use that technology to spy us isn't?

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.

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.

NSA loves this trick

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.