Hardware Podcasts

Artificial Hearing: From Ear Drums to Tuning Forks

EE Times Current · 7 Nov 2025 · 51m

What this episode covers

Dr. Claudia Lenk of the University of Bamberg explains her group's development of a silicon cochlea using micromechanical cantilever beams that act as artificial hair cells, offering frequency-selective sensing and adaptive feedback to improve speech recognition in noisy environments. The team is integrating these sensors with memristor-based reservoir computing for low-power hearing aid applications, a project funded by the Caritase Foundation under the name Noirosensia. The discussion also features Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings of Johns Hopkins University, who debates the definition of neuromorphic engineering and compares Lenk's active sensing approach to other low-power AI hardware like Chi-Chi Liu's recent work.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
University of Bamberg, University College London, Czech Technical University in Prague, Johns Hopkins University, Fraunhofer Institute, IMMS
Products
Noirosensia
Chips
memristor
Also
Caritase Foundation, reservoir computing, MFCC, Giacomo Indiveri, Brad Imsay, Chi-Chi Liu, Shichi, Andre Van Shaik

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