Noise-canceling robots to 'mute' loud conversations in cafe | What if we told you that we can actually silence a noisy table right next to us in a café?

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 207 points –
Noise-canceling robots to 'mute' loud conversations in cafe
interestingengineering.com

Noise-canceling robots to 'mute' loud conversations in cafe | What if we told you that we can actually silence a noisy table right next to us in a café?::undefined

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Besides what you mention, I have my reservations about 'crazy revolutionary'. If I remember correctly, noise cancelling only works in one very concentrated spot where the waves are measured and cancelled out. If you move a couple of inches, the cancellation isn't perfect anymore and does practically nothing. That's why ANC headphones work well (always right by your ear) but any other open application seems implausible to me.

Absolutely, this is spot on, but if they can find ways to work around this like with these microphone swarms they're proposing, then there could be a lot more applications for it. Some quite scary.

You're right. Without a demonstration I don't believe it works. Could be a misunderstanding on the part of the author trying to interpret what the inventors are saying...