Surprise Surprise imagine you are in a Car and the Music System is playing and there are 4 members in the car and each one wanted to hear 4 different song. what will you do??
The simple answer is, i will use my IPOD or MP3 player but what about this weird idea there are 4 loud speakers and each one can hear without wearing a head phones or ear phones, looks like science fiction that technology is called Hyper Sonic Sound (HSS)
How it works?
A Normal Loud Speaker will convert electric signals to Sound Waves and propagate through a medium such as air or water. Let me put in simple words, normal speaker acts as bulb when switched on light spreads on for full room, HSS is like LASER light , it can be beamed through a direction and always travels in straight line
Hyper Sonic Sound uses nothing but ultrasonic energy. Ultrasonic sounds can be directed as a beam and it will not heard by human ears. With the combination of an ultrasonic powered emitter and a proprietary signal processor/amplifier, HSS can focus sound into a tight beam for optimal sound directionality and intelligibility. Similar to a beam of light, HSS uses ultrasonic energy to “shine” your sound on a very specific area. HSS converts music or voice into a complex ultrasonic signal prior to amplification. Once emitted, the converted sound forms a sound column in front of the emitter, which remains focused as it encounters a listener located in the narrow column of sound
Inventor
This technology was invented by Woody Norris, founder of American Technology Corporation in 2002.
In the Above picture Norris with HSS Speaker
Norris was the winner of the 2005 Lemelson-MIT Prize for his invention of a "hypersonic sound" system which allows sound to be focused with high precision, Norris is currently the chairman of two companies he founded - American Technology Corporation in San Diego and AirScooter Corporation in Henderson.
Technical Description
“The piezoelectric transducer emits sound at frequencies above the human ear's 20,000-cycle threshold. Unlike low-frequency waves, the high-frequency signals don't spread out as they travel through air. Yet they do interact with the air to induce a related set of ultrasonic waves. These waves combine with the original waves, interfering to create an audible signal, focused into a beam.”
“The speaker (shown above) was pointed at someone one hundred yards away. The listener heard the sound as if through headphones - despite the ambient noise from a nearby freeway - and people two feet to either side heard nothing. Sound from an HSS speaker can travel up to 150 yards without distortion or loss of volume; anyone outside the beam path hears nothing.”
Source :Hypersonic Sound (HSS) - Loudspeaker Just For You
Applications
The potential is much
- Personalized Car Music System (provided your Music player plays two or more tracks)
- Laptop speakers that only the user can hear
- Grocery store displays heard only by the person standing directly in front of them
- Workers on the flight line on aircraft carriers
- Multi Screen Television, (it will be really cool)
- Kiosk, ATM’s etc
- Alarm Clock which only you can hear and others can sleep nicely (these are my ideas)
But as of now it seems American Technology Corporation has abandoned this technology for their large scale business. Even I too moved out of Electronics and came to softwares hmm what to do. I came to know this when I tried to get Google for my final year project in 2005 :)
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