Bugged phones

Insect upgrades

Post by Sophie Taylor | April 30, 2019

Ento-inspired smart phones

Using insects as tech gurus, smartphone researchers are creating ‘smarter, lighter and more sustainable’ devices. Everything from the microphone to the camera to the waterproof, anti glare screens are ento-inspired. The future really is insect.

Our favourite example of smartphone biomimicry has to be the directional mic. Our cricket and mosquito audiophiles use tiny hairs to detect the direction of sound waves, honing in on specific sounds and ignoring the rest. Soundskrit have developed hardware based on this insect tech which directly measures the particle velocity of sound instead of its pressure. This means we would be able to ‘zoom in’ on sounds to improve speech recognition, sound recording and enjoy more enlightening Siri chats.
So next time someone whinges, ‘what’s the point in mosquitoes anyway?’, record them on your phone and play it back to them while they eat their words.

Read more smartphone biomimicry examples from the original Wired article here.