Sensor detects sound direction and cuts background noise
From: Duke University - 08/13/2015
By: Ken Kingery

In a crowded room with voices coming from every direction, the human auditory
system is incredibly good at homing in on a single voice while filtering out
the background jabber. Computers are not.

A new sensor from engineers at Duke University, however, may soon improve
their performance in loud environments. The sensor uses metamaterials and
compressive sensing to determine the direction of a sound and extract it from
the surrounding background noise. The device could have applications in
voice-command electronics, medical sensing devices that use waves, hearing
aids, and cochlear implants.

Read the entire article at:
http://pratt.duke.edu/news/helping-siri-hear-through-cocktail-party

Links:
Steven A. Cummer
http://people.ee.duke.edu/~cummer

Single sensor multispeaker listening with acoustic metamaterials
http://people.ee.duke.edu/~cummer/reprints/180_Xie15_PNAS_CocktailPartyProblem.pdf