Echolocation For Your Cell Phone 73
sciencehabit writes "In a few years, an iPhone app may give you a 3D layout of a room as soon as you step into it. Researchers have developed an algorithm that spits out the shape and contours of complex structures (including Switzerland's Lausanne Cathedral) using data compiled from four randomly placed microphones. The technology, which relies on the same sort of echolocation bats and dolphins use to navigate, could be used to develop more realistic echoes in video games and virtual reality simulations and to eliminate the echo from phone calls."
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Note to Apple's patent lawyers...
"Let me get this straight. You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands; and your plan, is to *blackmail* this person?"
but what of the privacy implications?!! (Score:5, Funny)
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Lucius Fox will use it, but under protest.
Lucius Fox wouldn't be caught dead working for Apple. He wouldn't even work for the government. At Wayne Enterprises, it was setup for a short period of time, to justify a legitimate clear and imminent threat to the people, and was dismantled as soon as that threat was gone, and no "metadata" was collected; It was a targetted search. Apple collects and stores all of your searches, sells location information to the highest bidder, and could give a flying fuck through a rolling doughnut about your privacy.
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I think you're confusing Apple with Google.
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Is there a difference?
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see https://www.apple.com/apples-commitment-to-customer-privacy/
and then please post a link where google explcitly states it does not
"... store data related to customers’ location, Map searches or requests in any identifiable form"
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I think you're confusing Apple with Google.
Google doesn't sell data, it uses it. You can decide which one is worse.
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Maybe we should stick to comparing Apples with Apples.
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I think you're confusing Apple with Google.
I [huffingtonpost.com] don't [huffingtonpost.com] think [huffingtonpost.com] so [huffingtonpost.com]...
Just kill everyone involved (Score:1)
Genetically enhanced soldier freeing himself using his voice and the computer in his brain:
The Human Division, Episode 8: The Sound of Rebellion
Hmm... (Score:3, Funny)
Well, this will be fun. Bruce Wayne is probably the only one that could sue Apple for patent infringement and win.
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it's swiss tech institute who made this, not apple.
the iphone would need four randomly place mics on it too...
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Not quite. They didn't place 4 random mics on the phone (they'd be close enough to still be a point location) -- they placed the microphones in the room.
So, this will only work if you've set up the room for it.
PRISM (Score:1)
Won't somebody think of PRISM?
That is all.
Vigilante Justice (Score:2)
wait, wouldn't that be mutant ninja turtleneck? (Score:4, Funny)
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To become "The Man of Gorilla-Glass"??
Hey now, at least I didn't go for "Polyvinyl-Chloride Man".
Besides, even a super-Jobs is no match for Powdered Toast Man!
Strat
Google Ears (Score:3)
Want to bet Google tries to use this to do indoor mapping ?
Nightvision (Score:3)
I'll still have one hand over the family jewels when I walk in the dark though, trust in technology only goes so far
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And "PC" used to mean "Personal Computer", not "Windows". Get over it.
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"PC" used to mean 'Original IBM PC'- you know, the one with only 5 ISA slots and the cassette port connector next to the keyboard one, not PC-XT or PC-AT. Get over it.
And the point would be...? (Score:1)
Other than being cool, what would the point of this be? If it's light I can see with my own eyes. If it's dark, there are already flashlight apps that cause light (instead of sound) to be projected, and I can still see with my own eyes instead of looking down at my screen. If I'm blind, I can't see the screen anyway. And yes, I read the last sentence in the summary, which doesn't really seem to have anything to do with giving you the layout of a room.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they didn't accomp
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You just said that 3D mapping with only four microphones is useless in the real world.
Re:And the point would be...? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Only if you like splinters. You need to sand it down.
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say your roomate getting a partial mapping of what you look like naked under a door.... not quite as cool....
Naked under a door, I look pretty much like any other very tall, slightly overweight, going-on-middle-aged man with his clothes off and with a door on top of him. I don't see how confirming that I look vaguely like that is a major threat to my privacy.
the FBI having a general mapping of what rooms you go in in your house, how often...
Literally can be garnered from outside your house with fancy thermal optics and/or radio waves.
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>Literally can be garnered from outside your house with fancy thermal optics and/or radio waves.
Which put's agents outside your house, with a chance of you noticing them pointing a FLIR camera at your house.
Where as the phone could probably do all that for them remotely with no one the wiser, at least until they kick your door in.
Hey now I know why your were naked under the door.
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Military uses... (Score:1)
One of these on a reconnaissance robot and you get the 3D layout, as well as everything moving.
A rat-sized robot.
Details of Layout and Design (Score:1)
The full paper is available here (Score:5, Informative)
From the web page of one of the authors [harvard.edu]: Acoustic echoes reveal room shape [harvard.edu] (pdf).
It reminds me of GPS or radio telescope signals... (Score:4, Interesting)
I *gasp* read the actual document (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/06/12/1221464110.full.pdf+html) and it sounds like some pretty complicated work. It relies on a bunch of separate microphones to listen in an absolutely silent room for the exact same noise and the echos of bounces. Since you know where the microphones are in relation to each other you can compute when the initial sound and echos hits each microphone and from there reverse construct where the sound must have originated and the echos tell you what it bounces of off.
The math is a bit beyond me after being out of university for so long, but it seem similar to transliteration using in GPS where thanks to very fast sensor readings you can figure out where you are in relation to a fixed signal. To compute the shape in the in a noisy environment I wonder if you can use a "known" sound where you could listen for only that and filter out the regular noise. Either way the computation involved would be impressive but maybe not for the elusive "5 years time" computer.
It would be cool to have something like this in my fishing boat where instead of a dot on the screen I could get something that tells me where the fish are and what kind too. :-)
Maybe you could arrange them in a golumb ruler layout to further speed up processing... *sigh* Making websites pays well, but I miss computers science.
Re:It reminds me of GPS or radio telescope signals (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be cool to have something like this in my fishing boat where instead of a dot on the screen I could get something that tells me where the fish are and what kind too. :-)
At what point do you stop cheating and start fishing? What's so wrong with having intuition about where the fish are? There are plenty of tell-tale signs that would give you clues to where the fish are hiding.
I admit, I don't boat fish because it's absolutely way too boring. I prefer walking up the mountain river, pickup up river stones to see what bugs are underneath. Maybe boat fishing is just too different an animal that my tactics would not adapt well, but I doubt it. With enough experience, I am positive I could do just as well with a contour map of the water's floor and my own two eyes as the guy with the expensive boat with all kinds of sonic weapons.
Recreational fishing should be low-tech. Having endless gadgets to push the odds ever in your favor defeats the purpose.
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Recreational fishing should be low-tech.
OMG. Other people are having fun but they're doing it wrong!
Seriously, why do you care how other people fish?
Re:It reminds me of GPS or radio telescope signals (Score:4, Interesting)
I start to care when I find their trash littered all over the forest. I start to care when their loud boats zoom right into my casting line in the inlet. I start to care when their efficiency affect the experience for everyone else.
But all of that is besides the point. Recreational fishing is a meditative thing. You do it on the weekends, or for a couple weeks at a time, so that you can escape the daily grind and restore part of your soul. The more machines you add to that experience... you know the rest.
Re:It reminds me of GPS or radio telescope signals (Score:4, Insightful)
>Recreational fishing is a meditative thing.
For you, where do you get off trying to tell people how they do their recreational activities. You do things your way because they are fun for you. I do them differently because what you describe sounds painfully boring.
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I guess it would be boring if you were terrible at fishing and never had success.
I understand why people need to cheat and have all these machines to make it easier. It indeed would be boring to be a bad angler and unable to land fish.
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80% of fish stocks will be gone by 2040
How well did it work? (Score:2)
"I'm Batman!" (Score:2)
*hurls iPhone at mugger instead of Batarang*
"Do'h"
*slinks away with cape between legs.....mugger shrugs and picks up phone*
mugger: "Cool!"
Interesting. (Score:2)
An app to use your phone to find things? What I really need is an app to help me find my phone.
Yes, yes, I know all about WheresMy* - but that doesn't help when the batter is dead. :D
clearly you need an emergency battery (Score:2)
to power the location-finding mechanism when the main battery is dead
Finally (Score:3)
I've been waiting for years for that little automatically updating map that video games promised me.
Think about the possibilities of being able to grey it out too - imagine the convenience when hunting for your car keys, being able to see a ghost map on your phone of everywhere you've looked and say "Aha! That corner's missing! The extra treasure must be there!"
I turned my PC into a dolphin last year (Score:1)
THE NSA (Score:2)
Alcoholism? (Score:2)
Already have this app on Android (Score:2)
Great (Score:1)
Finally. (Score:2)
Live action Zork.