TU Ilmenau develops bio-inspired microphone for speech recognition

TU Ilmenau develops bio-inspired microphone for speech recognition The Technische Universität Ilmenau, together with research partners, has developed a microphone inspired by biology that picks up sound similar to the human ear. The microphone could help improve speech recognition for controlling a variety of digital applications. In the future, the new process could even make overall acoustic systems consisting of a microphone and speech recognition more efficient, so that they consume less energy. The results of the research conducted by the Group of Microand Nanoelectronic Systems at TU Ilmenau and its research partners have just been published in the renowned international journal Nature Electronics. Voice recognition technologies such as Alexa or Siri have made rapid progress in recent years. They can now understand voice commands very well, for example, to control cell phones, operate an alarm clock or even a wide variety of smart home applications. However, noisy environments with many different sounds, such as train stations, restaurants or streets, are still very problematic for current technologies with conventional microphones.