SonicBoom Robot That Feels Using Sound

Robots use a variety of sensors to perceive their surroundings. SonicBoom explores the idea of using an array of microphone to enable robots to feel. It has an end effector with a 4 x 12″ PVC pipe that holds six piezoelectric contact microphones. These will detect vibrations caused by physical contact. Machine learning models are trained on labeled contact data to improve localization.

With this approach, it is possible to make robot-human interactions safer. SonicBoom can distinguish between different types of contact. The above video gives you a better idea how this framework works

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