Facebook unveils details of AR glasses providing 'superhearing'

What Facebook has called “building the future” of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), is the unveiling of new AR glasses that can amplify what the wearer wants to hear even in a noisy environment. Releasing the details of the insides of Facebook Reality Labs Research, the California-based company elaborated on the “perpetual superpowers” that are the AR systems figuring out what an individual is trying to hear and then magnify it to dampen the background voices.

Facebook’s AR glasses are combined with spatial audio features and create the aural equivalent of a hologram overlay. This announcement by the tech arm of the company came after it was known that Facebook was pursuing high-quality virtual sound for several years mainly through its Oculus virtual reality headsets. The most latest research of Facebook Reality Labs is focussed on the augmented reality applications. To explain further, the company has given an example, “imagine being able to hold a conversation in a crowded restaurant or bar without having to raise your voice to be heard or straining to understand what others are saying”.

Facebook said, “The audio team at Facebook Reality Labs Research is working on novel technologies to enable both audio presence and perceptual superpowers, letting us hear better in noisy environments with our future AR glasses.”

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How would the AR glasses do it?

As per the company’s blog, the AR glasses would be able to amplify the sound that individual needs to hear by picking up audio with microphones, using contextual clues to gauge between important and non-important sounds and then feeding accordingly through a noise-cancelling earpiece. Conversely, if the person using these glasses is on a phone or video call, the improved spatial sound could project the sounds of the participants or other audio to specific parts of the room, enhancing the sense of the people actually sharing a space or “audio presence”. 

“The mission of the team is twofold: to create virtual sounds that are perceptually indistinguishable from reality and to redefine human hearing,” it said.

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