CSL Research May Improve Your Car’s Hearing

By Doug Peterson

Some day, your car might just become a good listener.

CSL researchers are trying to improve the ability of smart cars to hear verbal commands from drivers by combining visual information with the audio. Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, a CSL professor leading the effort, compares this visual/auditory approach to what people naturally do while trying to hear in a noisy room.

“When humans listen to speech in a very noisy environment, there is a tendency for the eyes to go down to the lip region,” he said. “By watching the lips while listening to the speech, you can correct possible mistakes that arise due to the noise level. We’re trying to make it possible for an automatic speech recognizer to do the same thing in the noisy environment of a car.” Read the story

***********

Making Beautiful Music
Researchers combine power efficiency with high-quality sound

By Doug Peterson

Walk into Philip Krein’s laboratory and you can hear beautiful classical music coming from a loudspeaker—near-perfect sound. But hook an oscilloscope to the terminals of the speaker and you see harsh-looking square waves going in. Read the story.