They have created a set of robots with automatic navigation, capable of muting different parts of a room, and they work this way.
Surely it has not been the first time that you have gone to the cinema, and you have had the bad luck that someone close to you did not stop talking during the movie, and perhaps the same thing has happened to you in a restaurant, where those at the table Next door, they were talking very loudly.
This could end, thanks to a new invention from a team of researchers who have created a fleet of intelligent robots, which are capable of silencing different parts of a room.
These robots They can be deployed in specific areas of a space, and once situated in a speaking zone, they can use their microphones and an algorithm to track and isolate the voices around them.
Best of all, users could even program them to not only silence a specific area of a room, but also to highlight certain conversations.
University of Washington
The invention was created by a team of researchers from the University of Washington, who published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.
The invention is still in its early stages, and consists of seven small robots that can be dispersed around different tables.
Each of the robots carries sensors to avoid collisions, and they also emit sounds.
The researchers comment that their robots are capable of precisely distributing themselves using only sound.
They have already tested them in offices, living rooms and kitchens, with different groups of people, and managed to discern different voices at a distance of 50 cm from each other and 90% of the time. And they did this without any prior information about the number of people in the place.
This technology It was also able to process three seconds of audio in an average of 1.82 seconds.
They want to go much further
Researchers say that once the technology improves, these robots will play a more important role in homes and also in large work meetings, where they could replace the need for a central microphone.
“I can say, ‘Don’t record anything around my desk,’ and our system will create a bubble three feet around me. “Nothing in this bubble would be recorded,” said co-lead author Malek Itania doctoral student at the University of Washington in the Paul G Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering.
“Or if two groups are talking next to each other and one group is having a private conversation, while the other group is recording, one conversation can be in a silent zone and will remain private,” he clarifies.
