Slashdot Mirror
Cell Phones That Learn the Sounds of Your Life
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Dartmouth College have developed new software that uses the microphone on the iPhone to track and interpret a user's everyday activities using sound. The software, called SoundSense,
picks up sounds and tries to classify them into certain
categories. SoundSense can recognize completely unfamiliar
sounds and runs entirely on the phone. It automatically classifies
sounds as 'voice,' 'music,' or 'ambient noise.' If a sound is repeated
often enough or for long enough, SoundSense gives it a high 'sound
rank' and asks the user to confirm that it is a significant sound and
offers the option to label the sound. In testing, the SoundSense
software was able to correctly determine when the user was in a
particular coffee shop, walking outside, brushing her teeth, cycling,
and driving in the car. It also picked up the noise of an ATM and a fan in a particular room. The results [PDF]
of the experiments were recently presented at the MobiSys 2009 conference."
For those of us who dont want to pay for it, dont worry! Next year the goverment will install it to your phone for free!
so in other words this will effectively let me tweet when i'm pooping without having to type it up on my phone. it may also be handy finding out if people have washed their hands after such an event ;)
Lets be honest people. If a device is capable, someone will write the software to enable it. This shouldn't be surprising or shocking. When 'wearable computers' started getting buzz it was because people were walking around with web-cams attached to their heads seeing everything they could see and slashdot thought it while amazingly geeky, was cool. This isn't that different except there's no soldering required.
To be honest, we haven't even seen the worst of it yet. Considering the deluge of FPGA and EEPROM powered embedded devices out there you'd best be scared of the things that are _hard_ to reprogram, not the ones with complete IDEs and API documentation available.
I'm more concerned about someone snooping on me from my Jura Capresso than I am from my cell phone.
"It sounds like you're going pee."
Then, if male: "Please, remember that there are ladies in the house, and put the seat down when you're done."
Else, if female: "If you're out of toilet paper again, I can call your sister to bring it to you."
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
From TFA:
"The SoundSense software was able to correctly determine when the user was [...] brushing her teeth [...] Choudhury says that enabling the software to learn to recognize new sounds will be essential for practical applications. 'A system that can recognize sounds in a person's life can be used to search for others who have the same preferences'"
That sounds like great functionality. " If you like brushing your teeth, you may be interested to know that 21 out of 23 people on your Contacts list also enjoy brushing their teeth."
could be to anonymously feed thousands of opt-in users current sound input into a public algorithmic service which provides data facilitating the creation of truely random numbers. Similar to the use of atmospheric noise by sites like Random.org; but this could be better because the sound input devices are decentralized and always moving.
There are the obvious problems to overcome with attempts to game this sort of system, but I think it an interesting idea.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Actually not a bad idea. A lot of time I would like to wear my iPod while doing house work, but I don't because I can't hear the baby cry. If I had an iPod that could recognize when the baby was crying, and play it over the headphones in place of my music, so that I knew the baby was crying, then I would really appreciate this feature. Same goes for somebody calling out my name. Even if there was a 1 second delay, it would be awesome.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Finally, an app that can automatically record how many times a day we were rejected by women. It should be called iGiveUp and have an icon of a geek with a gun in his mouth.
... though I suppose most of the Slashdotters would say "Someone really is out to get me!" Maybe. Let's ignore that for a moment, and address a question that arose multiple times in the comments. What possible use was this developed for?
Research. That's right. Research. Actually finding out what people are doing/eating/etc. is actually really hard. People's recollection is full of holes. Think about it: What were you doing exactly 1 hour ago? Most people will be able to name the task, but not what specific activity in that task they were doing. Where you talking? Where you typing. Where you taking a two minute mental break and staring off into space? Yeah. It's hard to recall these inane details. But things like how many people you have contact with, how often you're in public-public (and not in an office, etc.) are hard to get at. How many times have I been to the café down the street in the last week? Hell if I know. But if I volunteer for a study - let's say, time spent in a restaurant by number of colds people get (totally made up on the spot for the purpose of illustration), this way the researcher doesn't have to trust a potentially erroneous recollection... they can get another, good estimate. It's made to be opt-in, and for research of this, that or the other thing.
Is there a potential for abuse? Sure. There's lots of things with abuse potential. But I hate to break it to you, but they tracked Pablo Escobar in 93 from his phone. And it's only got easier since. If you want perfect privacy, don't get a cellphone.
how much battery power will this suck down?
I see a lot of tags/comments asking what this is useful for. There are a few uber-nerd things like recording your life and whatnot that I'm not going to get into, but the big one is determining location.
There are a TON of sweet things you can do with accurate location information, but the one that I'm most yearning for is to control my bluetooth, wifi, ringer volume, etc based on where I am during the day.
I'm an Android user, and there's a very nice applet called Locale that attempts to do this, but it proves to be pretty useless. The reason is that you're either using GPS (drains battery, doesn't work indoors) or wifi (drains lots of battery, and is the primary thing you want to control) to figure out where you are. If using the microphone and cpu is cheaper in energy, then this will be a big win.
Beyond the energy use argument, one of the main things you want to control is bluetooth - again, it drains batteries when on, and is not generally useful. But it's EXTRAORDINARILY useful in the car if you have a hands-free setup. Again, figuring out when you're in a car is hard via GPS or wifi, but this technique would seem to knock that one out of the park.
So, in summary, having your phone know where you are in your daily routine allows it to be more intelligent about what services and functionality it enables, and thus makes your cell phone that much smarter and more valuable.
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
Finally, a phone that can automatically disable the ringer when the phone's owner is having sex (or snoring).
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Actually this sounds like the echo location batman used in the Dark Night at the end except for being self contained on the phone versus using just the mic from all phones and processing centrally
- My uid ends in 69...
At least until the hard panning starts driving you slowly insane... some people can wear one ear all day, while I can't last ten minutes like that.
It sounds like you are having trouble reaching orgasm. Would you like me to
1) Moan real loud
2) Show erotic video
3) or, just vibrate
Arbitron is already using something somewhat like this.
They have their "test families", or whatever they're called, carry small devices they call "portable people meters". Television programming includes sonic markers outside of the audible range, which these devices pick up via a small mic.
One would think that being able to identify television/radio programming without pre-inserting said inaudible watermarks could simplify their process.
So if you fart a lot you'd get beano ads on your iPhone?
Like I really my phone to tell me my wife is bitching at me...
That's better than telling her you believe she's bitching at you!
Just point to the phone's labeling, smile and shrug helplessly.