JavaScript needs to be enabled in your web browser to access this page. Researchers at Seoul National University’s College of Engineering have revealed the development of what they claim is the world’s first 3D microphone centered around a single sensor. This innovative microphone can estimate the location of a sound source like a multi-sensor array. Lead author Semin Ahn, a doctoral candidate at the university, explains that previously, positioning with sound required multiple sensors or complex calculations. Creating a 3D sensor that can accurately pinpoint sound sources using only a single rotating microphone represents a significant advancement in acoustic sensing technology.
Inspired by the echolocation abilities of bats and dolphins, the sensing system, known as “3D acoustic perception technology,” utilizes a single microphone sensor placed in a hollow tube with rectangular slots. This configuration acts as a hardware-based phase cancellation mechanism. By rotating the microphone and processing the incoming data, the system can determine the source of sound in three-dimensional space. In addition to locating sound sources, the researchers have demonstrated that the 3D acoustic ranging (3DAR) system can facilitate a sound-based human-robot interaction system that functions effectively even in noisy environments.
The application of this technology extends to various fields, including industrial robotics, providing real-time tracking of user positions and assisting in search-and-rescue missions. During tests on a quadrupedal robot platform, the system displayed a high level of accuracy exceeding 90 percent in human-robot interaction tasks and 99 percent in robot-robot interaction tasks. Even with multiple sound sources, the tracking accuracy remained at 94 percent in noisy environments, according to the researchers. The details of the team’s work have been documented in the Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing journal under closed-access terms. The main image featured in the article is provided courtesy of Seoul National University College of Engineering. This work has been featured on Hackster.io, an Avnet Community, copyrighted in 2026.
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