Usually, the news that a research lab is being turned into a bar would suggest that it has failed and its researchers are throwing in the towel. But in the case of Facebook Reality Labs Research, a lab dedicated (in part) to coming up with creative new ways to improve hearing for members of the deaf or hard of hearing community, it showed that its work was paying off.
Facebook’s stated mission is to help people connect and communicate with one another. This is why, while it might seem off-mission to tackle this project, it actually fits perfectly into the company’s core competencies.
The problem Facebook has been trying to tackle is how to improve audio pickup for individuals in noisy environments. Although many people with hearing loss, depending on its severity, find it possible to hear and interact in one-on-one situations in quiet locations, noisy environments like bars or busy social settings can be a whole lot tougher. With that in mind, Facebook has been exploring how it can combine beamforming technology, deep learning, noise cancellation, and — perhaps most surprisingly — augmented reality (AR) to improve this situation.
In a recent project, Facebook scientists have been exploring how augmented reality glasses could help determine which sounds people want to amplify by looking at, well, where they’re looking. By matching a person’s focus, in terms of what they’re looking at, to audio inputs, AR glasses can figure out which sounds a person wants to hear and which they don’t — and then dial up or down the sound channels accordingly. As part of its experiments in this area, Facebook turned the workspace where much of this investigation is carried out into a fake bar to explore how it would work in a place with multiple noisy sound inputs.
“Many people with hearing loss don’t use hearing aids — in part — because they don’t work well in everyday situations like a noisy restaurant, a conversation involving multiple people at a loud party, or in a moving car,” Thomas Lunner, research lead for Facebook’s Hearing Science lab, told Digital Trends. “In conducting our enhanced hearing research for AR glasses, we realized that some of the discoveries we were making could be relevant to solving this problem. In [our new research], we show how augmented reality could supplement the hearing aid, through a system that understands what you want to listen to, isolates and enhances the sounds you want to hear, and reduces distracting background noise. By then sending the enhanced AR-processed signal to the hearing aid, you also get a system that adjusts for your unique hearing ability.”
Lunner is no novice when it comes to this area of research. He’s a renowned hearing scientist whose work laid the basis for what became the world’s first digital hearing aid in 1995. This research, while still in early stages, taps into a number of areas of research for Facebook, such as image recognition, natural language processing, and a whole lot more.
“Hearing sciences is an area we’re just starting to explore, so this technology is not available on any of our products, but we’re very excited about the possibilities with AR glasses,” Lunner continued. “We think they could one day help to deliver all sorts of enhancements, including helping anyone who has hearing loss or just has trouble understanding people at a party.”
Michael Abrash, chief scientist at Facebook Reality Labs, told Digital Trends that he believes that both augmented and virtual reality could have profound implications (and applications) in the accessibility space.
“AR and VR have enormous potential to benefit everyone, but they have especially high potential for people with varying physical abilities,” Abrash said. “For example, AR glasses may one day be able to enhance contrast in order to help people with poor vision see better, and may be able to provide visual feedback about ambient sounds and speech to the hearing impaired. As another example, we believe that VR — and eventually AR — will one day be able to create ultra-realistic virtual spaces and avatars that will enable those with mobility challenges to teleport to the office or to their grandmother’s living room.”
Facebook is, of course, best known for its social network. But just like Google parent company Alphabet, which explores self-driving cars, mapping systems and drone deliveries alongside search, Facebook is interested in far more than just news feeds and timelines. In the past, it has shown considerable interest in both VR and AR — with everything from its acquisition of Oculus to the creation of the Spark AR Studio. Facebook still has yet to show its hand when it comes to a lot of this technology. Still, if this work is anything to go by, it seems that Facebook could be using its considerable power for good when it comes to the future of connecting people.
A paper describing the work, titled “Potential of Augmented Reality Platforms to Improve Individual Hearing Aids and to Support More Ecologically Valid Research,” was recently published in the journal Ear & Hearing.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.