JOURNAL WATCH

Lidar Sensor Uses

Mirrors to Amp Up
Efficiency
Light detection and ranging (lidar)
technology relies on fast, precisely timed
laser pulses—a useful application for various
kinds of sensors, including those that
support the Internet of Things (IoT). However,
many of today’s sensors that rely on lidar are
expensive, bulky, heavy, and power hungry.
One group of researchers is proposing
a novel design that is both affordable and
requires very little power. The sensor relies
on a collection of microelectromechanical

(MEMS) mirrors to achieve high efficiency—
enough to require only a single 9-volt battery.
The design is described in a study published
2 July in IEEE Sensors Letters.
“This system is especially suitable
PUTTING
like the sound created by a rolling
wheel or a turning propeller. Elec-
tronics characterize the wave, gen-
SIRENS erate a mirror image of it, and emit a
second wave—the “antiwave”—from

ON MUTE
for smart buildings,” says Huikai Xie, a
an audio speaker, causing the two
professor at the Beijing Institute of
waves’ peaks and troughs to cancel
Technology who codesigned the new lidar-
each other out.
based sensor. “For instance, this system
may enable heating, ventilation, and air-
Noise-canceling This is known as antinoise tech-

conditioning systems to control airflow by

smart windows filter nology, and it works best for fre-

estimating the population distribution and

out street sounds quencies above 300 hertz and up to
about 1,000 Hz—so think the rumble
tracking people’s movement.”
of traffic rather than the crackling of
An outstanding issue, however, is
During hot weather, it’s fireworks that has plagued some U.S.
achieving a wide field of view without
nice to open a window to cities this summer. Antinoise also
consuming too much energy. Existing
let in a breeze. Maybe not, works best in limited spaces, where
designs, which rely on motorized
though, if the window also lets in a the wave and its antiwave are sure
optomechanical scanners to disperse the
cacophony from cars and trucks roar- to meet up properly, as in the gap
lidar signals for a wider field of view, typically
ing past. between a headphone and an ear.
consume tens of watts of power.
Street noise is a nuisance, a health However, with careful engineering,
Instead of a motorized optomechanical
hazard, and often cited as a reason to this audio trick can help reduce noise
scanner, Xie’s group’s design relies
abandon the city for quieter pastures. in an airplane’s cabin and even in
on MEMS mirrors to control the lidar
Why can’t technology ease the prob- a car. In airliners, the antinoise is
NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY SINGAPORE

signals. The mirrors require less power to

lem? We have noise-canceling head- conveyed through vibration sources
manipulate than bulky motorized scanners,
phones; why not ­n oise-canceling called shakers that are attached to
and adding a passive infrared sensor
windows as well? Now, researchers the fuselage; in cars it’s channeled
ensures that the system is activated only
in Singapore have created just such through the existing sound system.
when people are present.
a thing for a mockup room, and they In a paper published earlier this
Xie says he envisions this sensor being
are working on adapting their proof summer in the journal Nature,
used not just for detecting people in smart
of principle to a real room. researchers at Nanyang Technolog-
homes but also for an array of applications,
The idea is simple: A sensor picks ical University, in Singapore, describe
including robotics and small unmanned air
up a regularly repeating waveform, how an array of 24 small speakers
vehicles. —MICHELLE HAMPSON

An extended version of this article appears

on our website in the Journal Watch section. NEWS

08  | SEP 2020 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG
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KEY INGREDIENTS: A glass pane [left] carries a
sensor that samples street noise; an array of speakers
[right] emits the corresponding antinoise signal.
placed in a window, together with a sensor, can
generate an antinoise signal strong enough to cut
the room’s noise, as perceived by the human ear,
by 10 adjusted decibels, or dBA. That’s about the
difference between the sound of heavy traffic
60 meters away (60 dBA) and a quiet moment
in a city (50 dBA).
It’s a striking achievement to make wave and
antiwave cancel out perfectly throughout an
entire room. The key is that the noise all comes
through a relatively small aperture—the “win-
dow,” explains Bhan Lam, an electrical engineer
and the leader of the research group.
“In a way, we are treating the window open-
ing as the noise source,” Lam tells IEEE Spec-
trum. “Effective control of the noise source will
result in noise control everywhere in the room.”
Lam adds that, according to simulations, the
technique ought to work no matter how big
the room is.
It’s worth noting that there are two engineer-
ing trade-offs at play here. First, as you move the
speakers further apart, the highest frequency
they can cancel goes down. And as you make the
speakers smaller, you reduce their maximum
output power and their bass response. But if you
really want to make the most of today’s speaker
technology, Lam says, you can enlarge the win-
dow so that it can accommodate bigger speakers.
How far can we take this? Years ago, noise
from airliners flying overhead so ruffled people
at the U.S. Open tennis tournament, in Queens,
N.Y., that the city arranged to reroute air traffic
to and from nearby LaGuardia Airport for the
duration of the event. Why can’t antinoise do
that job instead?
We’re not there yet. “In an open space, if the
noise source is far away—say, from an aircraft—it
becomes a challenging problem,” Lam explains.
“This type of control is termed as spatial active
noise control, and the research is still in the
fundamental stage; only simulations have been
reported thus far.” —Philip E. Ross
A version of this article appears in our Tech
Talk blog.
POST YOUR COMMENTS AT spectrum.ieee.org/antinoise-sep2020
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CAN AI HIRING
SYSTEMS BE MADE
ANTIRACIST?
Makers and users of AI-assisted recruiting
software reexamine the tools’ development
and how they’re used
Two years ago, Amazon field of candidates as possible.
reportedly scrapped a One of these firms is
secret artificial-intelligence ­G apJumpers, which offers a
hiring tool after realizing that platform for applicants to take
the system had learned to pre- “blind auditions” designed to
fer male job candidates while assess job-related skills. The
penalizing female applicants— startup, based in San F ­ rancisco,
the result of the AI training uses machine learning to score
on resumes that mostly male and rank each candidate with-
candidates had submitted to out including any person-
the company. The episode ally identifiable information.
raised concerns over the use of Cofounder and CEO Kedar Iyer
machine learning in hiring soft- says this helps reduce reliance
ware that would perpetuate or on resumes, which, as sources
even exacerbate existing biases. of training data, are “riddled
Now, with the Black Lives with bias.” This method also
Matter movement spurring new avoids unwittingly replicating
discussions about discrimina- and propagating such biases
tion and equity issues within through the scaled-up reach of
the workforce, a number of automated recruiting.
startups are trying to show that That deliberate approach to
AI-powered recruiting tools can reducing discrimination may
in fact play a positive role in mit- be encouraging more compa-
igating human bias and help nies to try AI-assisted recruit-
make the hiring process fairer. ing. As the Black Lives Matter
These companies claim that, movement gained widespread
with careful design and training support, GapJumpers saw an
of their AI models, they were uptick in queries from potential
able to specifically address vari- clients. “We are seeing increased
ous sources of systemic bias in interest from companies of all
the recruitment pipeline. It’s sizes to improve their diversity
not a simple task: AI algorithms efforts,” Iyer says.
have a long history of being Another lesson from
unfair regarding gender, race, ­Amazon’s gender-biased AI is
and ethnicity. The strategies that paying close attention to
adopted by these companies the design and training of the
include scrubbing identifying system is not enough: AI soft-
information from applications, ware will almost always require
relying on anonymous inter- constant human oversight. For
views and skill-set tests, and developers and recruiters, that
even tuning the wording of job means not blindly trusting the
postings to attract as diverse a results of AI-powered tools;
SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | SEP 2020 |  09