Ying Wu College of Computing

Filing a noise complaint is a bit of a gamble. By the time an inspector arrives, the stream of trucks thundering by the night before may be long gone or the construction tools bedeviling the dinner hour turned off. In a dense soundscape, even pinpointing the worst offender can be a challenge. Was it a jackhammer or a tamping machine making that repetitive racket? Where logistics, human perceptual capabilities or simple manpower may fall short, however, smart acoustic sensors are being trained to succeed. Endowed with machine listening, the auditory sibling to computer vision, these cutting...