6 ms·

Acoustic cameras can see sound (2023) [video]

81 points by melenaboija 3y ago

henriquez 3y ago
Maybe I’m just really neurotic but I can see sound. Like the sound waves, my brain superimposes them on what I’m seeing, but only some of the time.
- jannyfer 3y ago
  You might have synesthesia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
  - monocasa 3y ago
    Some people can also just echolocate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation
    - astrange 3y ago
      It sounds like it's unclear if they perceive that "visually". Are there any cases where blind people have recreated an environment they explored this way? (like how an artist could make a drawing of it) I guess that's at least twice as hard…
      - femto 3y ago
        Yes. Some blind people report being able to see things with sound and MRI scans show their visual cortex lighting up [1,2,3]. A 2019 paper [4] showed that the visual cortex of a blind echolocating person is lighting up in a comparable way to that of a sighted person. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102086/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102086/ [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/blind-people-echolocate-with-visual-part-of-brain-1.1012642 https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/blind-people-echolocate-with... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation#Brain_areas_associated_with_echolocation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation#Brain_areas... [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6790759/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6790759/
      - m-s-y 3y ago
        All my life I’ve left the lights off if I get up during the night. I sneeze like crazy at bright lights so I leave them off to avoid waking myself up at 3am. I swear I’ve developed some kind of echolocation sensitivity in the process. For what it’s worth, for me, it’s not much different than moving around my various places with my eyes. Like most people, when I see an obstruction with my eyes I don’t train my eyes on it and make a conscious decision to avoid it, I just “avoid it”. And when I know I need to go through a door, or down a hallway, it just kinda happens as if i had seen it with my own eyes. I don’t over concentrate on it any more than I would if the lights were on and I could see clearly. The only “image” navigational image in my brain is an original Wolf3D screenshot. It’s the same when I get up at night, even in a strange place. The shuffling of my feet on the floor is the sound I use fwiw.
BryanLegend 3y ago
I love how everything in Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir is very feasible, including this. So much Sci-Fi is just magic. I recently read the Dune book and was disappointed at how much of the "science" was just "because magic!"
- passwordoops 3y ago
  Dune is "science fiction" insofar as it takes place on a desert planet with space worms and space travel is a thing. In reality it's a deep critique on the foundation and evolution of religion not to mention the nature of familial relationships. Given the heady topics, and deeply layered study into human nature, I personally forgive the "because magic"
  - dylan604 3y ago
    a lot of non-religious people have to forgive "because magic" in religion too when reading the text at hand.
- causality0 3y ago
  To be fair, the whole lightspeed microbes thing is just magic, as is the magically fast language acquisition. I love the novel but I haven't spoken to a single linguist who liked it.
  - pipo234 3y ago
    As a linguist, I liked the novel but I totally agree the "first contact" aspect is pretty shoddy. The microbes magic is like a necessary evil to explain why we suddenly can (and must) go interstellar. The story also includes some "unaddressed magic", like how come Rocky find Grace "at" (orbiting) Tau Ceti? Like we would instantly detect an alien space ship entering "our solar system" because "we're there too".
    - metanonsense 3y ago
      Wasn't that explained with that "we have this huge infrared exhaust" thing?
dylan604 3y ago
Is Steve okay? He looks like he's just come off a 3 day bender. Not saying that's why he looks the way he does, but that's just my most familiar reference. Otherwise, my arm chair medical diagnosis turns to something else and like webMD just jump to cancer. I like his content whenever it's linked, so I hope he's just "tired"
- bowsamic 3y ago
  He looks completely fine to me if not “better” than normal
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago
  He's an English guy who has a young child, illuminated by a ring light. This is just how we look under artificial light in these circumstances. (And (whisper it) unlike a good number of US male youtubers he's not wearing makeup.) To me he looks well. Paleness doesn't kill, nor is it necessarily an indicator of illness.
EZ-Cheeze 3y ago
I dream of a public room filled with devices that let you see what is normally invisible: acoustic camera, thermal camera, microscope, telescope, endoscope, ultrasound, high-speed camera, hyperspectral camera, schlieren imaging (airflow), cloud chamber (particle traces)... It would cost millions but would expand minds HARD yo.
- canadiantim 3y ago
  This is a good dream.
- vjulian 3y ago
  All combined, it would allow for the perception of a different kind of reality for the person immersed in the multiple input streams. It would expand minds hard indeed yo.
- Paddywack 3y ago
  Then imagine it feeding all of this through Neuralink as extra senses...
  - psadri 3y ago
    Reminds me of Geordi LaForge in Star Trek TNG.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > see what is normally invisible Note that this isn't exactly the same as getting more information. Consider how terrible it would be if you were suddenly granted the ability to nitrogen gas: You would blindly stumble around in a dense fog before being eaten by a predator you never saw coming. Good filtering can almost be more important than good sensors. I think that's also a great argument in favor of false-color/hyperspectral images of other planets: Why limit ourselves to the arbitrary wavelengths that were "chosen" just for Earth's atmosphere?
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    > Why limit ourselves to the arbitrary wavelengths They're not arbitrary: * These are the ones where the energy output of Sun's black body radiation peaks, giving the scene lighting. * These are also the ones which coincide with many excited/base energy level transitions for electrons on molecular level, giving matter a color. Perhaps it is a quirk of our universe that these two ranges coincide. I'm not sure if that's a given.
robviren 3y ago
Truly impressive when the video shows them simultaneously self locating the camera, 3d scanning the object, and gathering an audio profile at the same time. Extremely clever use of SLAM. And the droppper tool that lets you listen to each sound produced in specific areas. I used to work with phased array ultrasound so seeing similar concepts applied to non-ultra sonic applications is astounding.
npunt 3y ago
This was so cool, I really want to see this (and thermal, and...) integrated into devices so we get the full tricorder thing going on. I hadn't considered acoustics being a whole class of use case for maintenance, but imagine if we had one of these in our pockets how much better our built environment would get, since everyone would be able to see issues & point them out. Visualizing the invisible is a powerful way to get change. Also that train wheel example was a real missed opportunity to say 'squeaky wheel gets the oil'.
- thatsadude 3y ago
  You can buy a USB microphone array and create one yourself. - https://pysdr.org/content/doa.html https://pysdr.org/content/doa.html - https://www.minidsp.com/products/usb-audio-interface/uma-16-microphone-array https://www.minidsp.com/products/usb-audio-interface/uma-16-...
jmakov 3y ago
What would you see if you pointed that thing at space?
- chipweinberger 3y ago
  sound doesnt travel through outer space sadly
spacebanana7 3y ago
Hopefully these can be used in air defence systems against mosquitos.

81 points by melenaboija 3y ago

Maybe I’m just really neurotic but I can see sound. Like the sound waves, my brain superimposes them on what I’m seeing, but only some of the time.

jannyfer 3y ago
You might have synesthesia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
- monocasa 3y ago
  Some people can also just echolocate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation
  - astrange 3y ago
    It sounds like it's unclear if they perceive that "visually". Are there any cases where blind people have recreated an environment they explored this way? (like how an artist could make a drawing of it) I guess that's at least twice as hard…
    - femto 3y ago
      Yes. Some blind people report being able to see things with sound and MRI scans show their visual cortex lighting up [1,2,3]. A 2019 paper [4] showed that the visual cortex of a blind echolocating person is lighting up in a comparable way to that of a sighted person. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102086/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102086/ [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/blind-people-echolocate-with-visual-part-of-brain-1.1012642 https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/blind-people-echolocate-with... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation#Brain_areas_associated_with_echolocation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation#Brain_areas... [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6790759/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6790759/
    - m-s-y 3y ago
      All my life I’ve left the lights off if I get up during the night. I sneeze like crazy at bright lights so I leave them off to avoid waking myself up at 3am. I swear I’ve developed some kind of echolocation sensitivity in the process. For what it’s worth, for me, it’s not much different than moving around my various places with my eyes. Like most people, when I see an obstruction with my eyes I don’t train my eyes on it and make a conscious decision to avoid it, I just “avoid it”. And when I know I need to go through a door, or down a hallway, it just kinda happens as if i had seen it with my own eyes. I don’t over concentrate on it any more than I would if the lights were on and I could see clearly. The only “image” navigational image in my brain is an original Wolf3D screenshot. It’s the same when I get up at night, even in a strange place. The shuffling of my feet on the floor is the sound I use fwiw.

BryanLegend 3y ago

I love how everything in Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir is very feasible, including this. So much Sci-Fi is just magic. I recently read the Dune book and was disappointed at how much of the "science" was just "because magic!"

passwordoops 3y ago
Dune is "science fiction" insofar as it takes place on a desert planet with space worms and space travel is a thing. In reality it's a deep critique on the foundation and evolution of religion not to mention the nature of familial relationships. Given the heady topics, and deeply layered study into human nature, I personally forgive the "because magic"
- dylan604 3y ago
  a lot of non-religious people have to forgive "because magic" in religion too when reading the text at hand.
causality0 3y ago
To be fair, the whole lightspeed microbes thing is just magic, as is the magically fast language acquisition. I love the novel but I haven't spoken to a single linguist who liked it.
- pipo234 3y ago
  As a linguist, I liked the novel but I totally agree the "first contact" aspect is pretty shoddy. The microbes magic is like a necessary evil to explain why we suddenly can (and must) go interstellar. The story also includes some "unaddressed magic", like how come Rocky find Grace "at" (orbiting) Tau Ceti? Like we would instantly detect an alien space ship entering "our solar system" because "we're there too".
  - metanonsense 3y ago
    Wasn't that explained with that "we have this huge infrared exhaust" thing?

dylan604 3y ago

Is Steve okay? He looks like he's just come off a 3 day bender. Not saying that's why he looks the way he does, but that's just my most familiar reference. Otherwise, my arm chair medical diagnosis turns to something else and like webMD just jump to cancer. I like his content whenever it's linked, so I hope he's just "tired"

bowsamic 3y ago
He looks completely fine to me if not “better” than normal
bemusedthrow75 3y ago
He's an English guy who has a young child, illuminated by a ring light. This is just how we look under artificial light in these circumstances. (And (whisper it) unlike a good number of US male youtubers he's not wearing makeup.) To me he looks well. Paleness doesn't kill, nor is it necessarily an indicator of illness.

EZ-Cheeze 3y ago

I dream of a public room filled with devices that let you see what is normally invisible: acoustic camera, thermal camera, microscope, telescope, endoscope, ultrasound, high-speed camera, hyperspectral camera, schlieren imaging (airflow), cloud chamber (particle traces)... It would cost millions but would expand minds HARD yo.

canadiantim 3y ago
This is a good dream.
vjulian 3y ago
All combined, it would allow for the perception of a different kind of reality for the person immersed in the multiple input streams. It would expand minds hard indeed yo.
Paddywack 3y ago
Then imagine it feeding all of this through Neuralink as extra senses...
- psadri 3y ago
  Reminds me of Geordi LaForge in Star Trek TNG.
Terr_ 3y ago
> see what is normally invisible Note that this isn't exactly the same as getting more information. Consider how terrible it would be if you were suddenly granted the ability to nitrogen gas: You would blindly stumble around in a dense fog before being eaten by a predator you never saw coming. Good filtering can almost be more important than good sensors. I think that's also a great argument in favor of false-color/hyperspectral images of other planets: Why limit ourselves to the arbitrary wavelengths that were "chosen" just for Earth's atmosphere?
- thriftwy 3y ago
  > Why limit ourselves to the arbitrary wavelengths They're not arbitrary: * These are the ones where the energy output of Sun's black body radiation peaks, giving the scene lighting. * These are also the ones which coincide with many excited/base energy level transitions for electrons on molecular level, giving matter a color. Perhaps it is a quirk of our universe that these two ranges coincide. I'm not sure if that's a given.

robviren 3y ago

Truly impressive when the video shows them simultaneously self locating the camera, 3d scanning the object, and gathering an audio profile at the same time. Extremely clever use of SLAM. And the droppper tool that lets you listen to each sound produced in specific areas. I used to work with phased array ultrasound so seeing similar concepts applied to non-ultra sonic applications is astounding.

npunt 3y ago

This was so cool, I really want to see this (and thermal, and...) integrated into devices so we get the full tricorder thing going on. I hadn't considered acoustics being a whole class of use case for maintenance, but imagine if we had one of these in our pockets how much better our built environment would get, since everyone would be able to see issues & point them out. Visualizing the invisible is a powerful way to get change. Also that train wheel example was a real missed opportunity to say 'squeaky wheel gets the oil'.

thatsadude 3y ago
You can buy a USB microphone array and create one yourself. - https://pysdr.org/content/doa.html https://pysdr.org/content/doa.html - https://www.minidsp.com/products/usb-audio-interface/uma-16-microphone-array https://www.minidsp.com/products/usb-audio-interface/uma-16-...

jmakov 3y ago

What would you see if you pointed that thing at space?

chipweinberger 3y ago
sound doesnt travel through outer space sadly

spacebanana7 3y ago

Hopefully these can be used in air defence systems against mosquitos.