Live Demonstration: Event-Based Visual Microphone

Ryogo Niwa, Tatsuki Fushimi, Kenta Yamamoto, Yoichi Ochiai; Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Workshops, 2023, pp. 4054-4055

Non-contact measurement devices, such as laser Doppler vibrometers(LDV) and high-speed cameras, have been developed to measure various forms of vibrations. LDVs are expensive, and high-speed cameras have a significant trade off between resolutions and sampling frequency. Herein, we propose a non-contact, simple, and inexpensive approach to measure vibration using an event camera that records only changes in brightness. We demonstrated the reconstruction of audible sounds using the event camera; to the best of our knowledge, this study could be considered the first to successfully apply this method. This study addresses the challenges in measuring and reconstructing vibrations without requiring additional lighting and using a cost-effective method that can recover audible sounds and human voice. This method provides a new avenue for scientists and engineers to develop cost-effective and non-contact methods for measuring and reconstructing vibrations and sounds.