IoT needs to use sound

#Discussion(IoTStack) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

Household devices will increasingly communicate with one another and even evolve according to our requirements, offering dramatic increases in what they can do. The vision seems to be that we will control these devices through an intermediary: manufacturers have investigated robots, smart displays and voice assistants to varying degrees of success.
Instead, it would be better to draw on the likes of clicking kettles and popping toasters and program the devices of the future to use sounds to communicate with us directly – and listen at the same time. Otherwise, we will be passing up on a whole stream of information that could make the internet of things far more effective.
Sound allows us to get messages while doing other things at the same tine. We also interpret their information about 40 milliseconds faster than visual cues. This is why, for example, athletic competitions still use starters’ pistols.
This kind of communication has carried over badly to the digital era, however. Computers and smartphones may make sounds to tell us things, but we tend to silence them or reduce them to a minimum.

Sound control
Alerts from these devices wouldn’t have to be very noisy. They could be set to only alert us when absolutely necessary. They could be programmed to make fewer sounds over time to acknowledge that the user is familiar with the device and operating it correctly

Listening, learning
Sound alerts are only a small part of the picture. The bigger prize is enabling devices to “hear” – both other devices and other sounds in a house.
This could be done relatively easily using similar technology to audio watermarking, where very subtle audio is embedded into a music track and a piece of software enables a computer to count plays for copyright purposes. In the case of household devices, all they would require is a microphone, loudspeaker and relevant software.

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