DAEJEON, South Korea,
June 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A
KAIST research team has developed a bioinspired flexible
piezoelectric acoustic sensor with multi-resonant ultrathin
piezoelectric membrane mimicking the basilar membrane of the human
cochlea. The flexible acoustic sensor has been miniaturized for
embedding into smartphones and the first commercial prototype is
ready for accurate and far-distant voice detection.
In 2018, Professor Keon Jae Lee
presented the first concept of a flexible piezoelectric acoustic
sensor, inspired by the fact that humans can accurately detect
far-distant voices using a multi-resonant trapezoidal membrane with
20,000 hair cells. However, previous acoustic sensors could not be
integrated into commercial products like smartphones and AI
speakers due to their large device size.
In this work, the research team fabricated a mobile-sized
acoustic sensor by adopting ultrathin piezoelectric membranes with
high sensitivity. Simulation studies proved that the ultrathin
polymer underneath inorganic piezoelectric thin film can broaden
the resonant bandwidth to cover the entire voice frequency range
using seven channels. Based on this theory, the research team
successfully demonstrated the miniaturized acoustic sensor mounted
in commercial smartphones and AI speakers for machine
learning-based biometric authentication and voice processing.
The resonant mobile acoustic sensor has superior sensitivity and
multi-channel signals compared to conventional condenser
microphones with a single channel, and it has shown highly accurate
and far-distant speaker identification with a small amount of voice
training data. The error rate of speaker identification was
significantly reduced by 56% (with 150 training datasets) and 75%
(with 2,800 training datasets) compared to that of a MEMS condenser
device.
Professor Lee said, "Google has been targeting the 'Wolverine
Project' on far-distant voice separation from multi-users for
next-generation AI user interfaces. I expect that our multi-channel
resonant acoustic sensor with abundant voice information is the
best fit for this application."
Professor Lee also established a startup company Fronics Inc.,
in Korea and U.S. to commercialize this flexible acoustic sensor.
This research was published in Science Advances in
February 2021.
About KAIST
KAIST(https://kaist.ac.kr/en) is the first and top science and
technology university in Korea. KAIST was established in 1971 by
the Korean government to educate scientists and engineers committed
to the industrialization and economic growth of Korea.
Since then, KAIST and its 64,739 graduates have been the gateway
to advanced science and technology, innovation, and
entrepreneurship. KAIST has emerged as one of the most innovative
universities with more than 10,000 students enrolled in five
colleges and seven schools including 1,039 international students
from 90 countries.
On the precipice of its semi-centennial anniversary in 2021,
KAIST continues to strive to make the world better through the
pursuit in education, research, entrepreneurship, and
globalization.
Media Contact
Younghye Cho
kaistpr@kaist.ac.kr
younghyecho@kaist.ac.kr
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SOURCE KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and
Technology)