Woody Norris: Hypersonic sound and other inventions

www.ted.com Woody Norris shows off two of his inventions that treat sound in new ways, and talks about his untraditional approach to inventing and education. As he puts it: "Almost nothing has been invented yet." So -- what's next?
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Watch the Top 10 TEDTalks on TED.com, at www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10

[@CanadianArchaeologist]

The action lab sent me here.

[@anandgupta3433]

Before action lab video views were just 160,000.

[@tommybgoode7565]

"Sony is our biggest customer" I came back to this video because it occured to me the other day: I watched this video about 6 years ago now and WHERE IS THIS TECH NOW, why isn't it in my iPad or at my desk at work, why am I still using headphones???

[@rolldeepNASA]

disturbing how the audience laughs when the speaker (person, not device) describes the technology's military application

[@djben1977]

I have to honestly say that this sound projection system bothers me quite a bit. The fluff that it offers is cute, but listening to him explain how this unit is being used militarily, raises a lot of red flags for me. That would be a great idea for a dance club sound system. But, it's the other side that stands out. Phew.

[@nicklovin56]

He came to my school last year cuz his daughter went their and gave a presentation to our physics class, hes a cool guy but hes all about business because he grew up in a poor family hahaha, he invited me to his nice ass house and gave me some free speakers and showed off some of his other cool gadgets besides the hypersonic sound speaker. really amazing stuff he's got.

[@Kichu-lt1sw]

Action Lab

[@andrijaaqualung2501]

This is just too awesome, absolutely amazing!

[@BBQPeanut]

They use this in the military, super high pitch sounds aimed towards troops to disable them..

[@himanshuagarwal3451]

Why has this technology still not found it's implementation even after 10 years ..

[@TrueGreatness73]

the scary thing is that our government is using great technology like this on its own ppl.

[@vermakartikey]

The action lab squad hit like.

[@PierreRousseau1958]

The Terminator is incredibly simplistic compared to the horror that is likely to happen. Imagine hearing sounds where there is nothing while robots of all sizes attack you, from inside and outside your body. ... for instance nanotechnology. Woody himself admits that the surface of possible technology has not even been scratched.

[@Craneger]

Always said that audio tech is mostly classified; I have a hypothesis about commercial use of a possible “speech embedding” tech. It involves embedding a verbal phrase into a scripted dialogue. For example: a radio show has talk about current events, nothing unusual. The embedded phrase might be, “Mister Magoo is a bad man”. The software analyzes the overt speech in a time delay or if it is pre-recorded, and using a Fourier transform, can embed the phrase into the overt speech. The result is that you hear the embedded phrase in a subliminal fashion. If it’s not being used now, it is well within audio processing to do so.

[@Staminist-MMF-80]

This invention is 15 years old and NOTHING is really done?!?!

[@5y89sdfih]

Wow, this is incredible stuff.

[@TECHKLEC]

There was a parellel tracking phonograph arm available in the mid fifties manufactured by Rabco that moved inward with a microswitch and worked very well on stereo LPs of the day.

[@Devilsnightforlife]

Wow thats a huge invention! Im definitely gonna buy one at some point!

[@ScottishAtheist]

Wow, it's something you'd have to experience 1st hand to really appreciate, but that sounds amazing. I had no idea you could direct sound waves so precisely.

[@Alriskeke]

haha, amazing, can even hear it disturbing the microphones in the studio :D