341 research outputs found
A biomimetic basis for auditory processing and the perception of natural sounds
Biomimicry is a powerful science that aims to take advantage of nature's
remarkable ability to devise innovative solutions to challenging problems. In
the setting of hearing, mimicking how humans hear is the foremost strategy in
designing effective artificial hearing approaches. In this work, we explore the
mathematical foundations for the exchange of design inspiration and features
between biological hearing systems, artificial sound-filtering devices, and
signal processing algorithms. Our starting point is a concise asymptotic
analysis of subwavelength acoustic metamaterials. We are able to fine tune this
structure to mimic the biomechanical properties of the cochlea, at the same
scale. We then turn our attention to developing a biomimetic signal processing
algorithm. We use the response of the cochlea-like structure as an initial
filtering layer and then add additional biomimetic processing stages, designed
to mimic the human auditory system's ability to recognise the global properties
of natural sounds
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