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Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ researchers developed a system called VueBuds that uses tiny cameras in off-the-shelf wireless earbuds to allow users to talk with an AI model about the scene in front of them. For instance, a user might look at a Korean food package and say, “Hey VueBuds, translate this for me.â€� They’d then hear an AI voice say, “The visible text translates to ‘Cold Noodles’ in English.

Researchers at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ have developed AI-powered headphones that automatically isolate conversation partners in a noisy soundscape. The system employs AI models that listen for the back-and-forth pattern of conversation and mute voices that aren’t following the established rhythm.

Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ researchers designed a headphone system that translates several people speaking at once, following them as they move and preserving the direction and qualities of their voices. The team built the system, called Spatial Speech Translation, with off-the-shelf noise-cancelling headphones fitted with microphones.

Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ researchers have developed IRIS, a smart ring that allows users to point and click to control smart devices. The prototype Bluetooth ring contains a small camera which sends an image of the selected device to the user’s phone. The user can control the device by clicking a small button or — for devices with gradient controls, such as a speaker’s volume — rotating the ring.

A team led by researchers at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ has created a headphone prototype that allows listeners to hear people speaking within a bubble with a programmable radius of 3 to 6 feet. Voices and sounds outside the bubble are quieted an average of 49 decibels, even if they’re louder than those in the bubble.

A Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ team has developed an artificial intelligence system that lets someone wearing headphones look at a person speaking for three to five seconds to “enrollâ€� them. The system then plays just the enrolled speaker’s voice in real time, even as the pair move around in noisy environments.

A team led by researchers at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ has developed deep-learning algorithms that let users pick which sounds filter through their headphones in real time. Either through voice commands or a smartphone app, headphone wearers can select which sounds they want to include from 20 classes, such as sirens, baby cries, speech, vacuum cleaners and bird chirps.

Shyam Gollakota, a Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, has taken inspiration from nature’s tiniest creatures, creating inventions that allow humans to use technology to go where they haven’t gone before. He is being celebrated for those inventions as a 2021 Moore Inventor Fellow.

Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ researchers have developed a new tool to monitor people for cardiac arrest while they’re asleep — all without touching them. The tool is essentially an app for a smart speaker or a smartphone that allows it to detect the signature sounds of cardiac arrest and call for help.

Engineers at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ have developed 3D printed devices that can track and store their use — without using batteries or electronics. Instead, this system uses a method called backscatter, through which a device can share information by reflecting signals that have been transmitted to it with an antenna.

Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ researchers have demonstrated for the first time that devices that run on almost zero power can transmit data across distances of up to 2.8 kilometers — breaking a long-held barrier and potentially enabling a vast array of interconnected devices.

Researchers at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ have demonstrated how it is possible to transform a smart device into a surveillance tool that can collect information about the body position and movements of the user, as well as other people in the device’s immediate vicinity. Their approach involves remotely hijacking smart devices to play music embedded with repeating pulses that track a person’s position, body movements, and activities both in the vicinity of the device as well as through walls.

“Interscatter” communication developed by Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ engineers allows power-limited devices such as brain implants, contact lenses, credit cards and smaller wearable electronics to talk to everyday devices such as smartphones and watches.

With “Passive Wi-Fi,” Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ computer scientists and electrical engineers have generated Wi-Fi transmissions using 10,000 times less power than conventional methods. The system can transmit Wi-Fi signals at rates up to 11 megabits per second — lower than maximum Wi-Fi speeds but 11 times faster than Bluetooth — that can be decoded on any of the billions of devices with Wi-Fi connectivity.

The Power Over Wi-Fi (PoWiFi) system developed by Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ engineers is one of the most innovative and game-changing technologies of the year, according to Popular Science, which included it in the magazine’s annual “Best of What’s New” awards announced this week.