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.
Wait, what? Doesn’t phase cancellation actually cancel the waves? How can it be inaudible but still present?
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.
Thankfully double would only be 3db, and 10db is about a doubling by our perception?
Yes - but 3db is twice the energy, which is what matters when it comes to damaging your cochlea
I feel like this doesn’t happen very often though. I mean I wear sound canceling headphones all the time and I’ve never noticed it accidentally making anything louder. Then again, I don’t normally stand near jet engines.
I wouldn’t imagine noise cancelling headphones would have the ability to output high enough for serious damage. But some people do experience discomfort and pressure when using noise cancelling headphones for the first time, this could be due to a number of factors though.
My noise cancelling headphones make wind noise much louder when it’s really windy.
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.
It can’t double the dBs. It will only add 3 as dBs are a log scale and +/-3dBs is double/half.
Oops, yes, this. A perceived doubling!
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…
We can start with cancelling my neighbor’s dog at 6AM and work our way up to jet tarmac zen garden.
Wouldn’t this system cause more noise for people on other tables around you?
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
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.
I can already do that
waves gun
*screaming intensifies*
“Whoops, turned it up instead of down, one sec.”
BANG
Forbidden sushi
If only the PCB was white…
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.
Is it a robot that smacks people when they go above a certain decibel level?
They’re going to use that technology to spy us isn’t?
Given that noise cancellation thus far as involved multiple microphones to identify background noise - yes
Why does every cool innovation have to have an immediately applicable shitty implication 😭
Eh, everything can be used shitty, but it’s often more work to use a cool thing shitty than it is to just be shitty.
Like you could do this, or you can put a cheap directional mic in the ceiling where it has free access to power.Being able to beat someone to death with a defibrillator doesn’t undermine it’s value as a life saving tool.
I mean, in this case all they need to do is attach data storage, and suddenly they have a massive data set of natural human conversation to sell to whoever’s training AI.
Sure, but it’s still cheaper to stick a microphone in the ceiling.
And if you’re looking for training data, there’s cheaper ways still.
I’m not saying you can’t use this for evil, I’m just saying that it’s easier to do those same things other ways.
I get what you’re saying, but what I was trying to get at was how a lot of these shiny cool things lately seem to be a way to easily package unwanted things. Google’s new AI integration openly reads and analyses everything you store and write in Google services, to assist you. People would be up in arms about slapping microphones around in public, but a public noise cancellation system that requires dozens of microphones constantly listening is just really cool.
There are easier ways, but the fact that it’s cool sidesteps almost all the resistance. Same way facial recognition cameras covering the UK is talked about as method to only catch criminals, not something that tracks everyone that steps outside their home.
I think your Google example is a good one, but for a different reason.
Google was already analyzing everything you stored and wrote in their services; they didn’t need to use AI as a cover for doing that, they just did it. They didn’t even need to hide it or pretend they weren’t.Yeah, people probably wouldn’t like microphones everywhere. Unless you just call it a security camera, and then we don’t notice them.
Why invent a novel dynamic noise cancelation algorithm and robot platform when plastic dome technology is so well understood?People are cheap and lazy, and even when they’re being shitty they’re not going to do more than they have to, or overly complicate things.
Why would they do this ? They already do it through your smartphone.
They’re different people.
This tech isn’t at all needed to spy on you.
I was going to say, wouldn’t this require recording of literally every noise around you in order to cancel it out?
They already do that in order to cancel everyone sounds, your conversation is the noise of the next table.
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.
What you described from your previous workplace sounds amazing, but you must’ve used phase cancellation too, didn’t you?
How is this so much different from what you’ve used back then?
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 😃
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.
Read W40K as WD40 and wondered why you’d lubricate people to mute them
You’re making their smooth talking smooth enough to fly by you
You mean your awesome T’AU empire mate, small error in the wording
That’s a funny way to spell Brettonians.
As I have a tau army, I just so happen to know that they just look much better than those crumpled pieces I thought I’d seen in the thumbnail.
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 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
NSA loves this trick
What the swarm of microphones that follows people around? That’s just to help keep the noise down.
Make robot who would make next table conversations interesting.
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.
Exactly. The restaurants are being made to be loud on purpose.
Hard surfaces everywhere. Loud music.
I’m tempted to get a decibel meter and threaten to file OSHA complaints.
