3. Intelligent sound sensor

3.1 Context

Sound environment analysis initially focused on speech (speech recognition) and speaker recognition (biometrics), treating the rest of the sounds as noise compared to speech. Yet it's not difficult to recognize that environmental sounds encapsulate a considerable amount of information that we use in everyday life. Whether it's a ringing phone, a car horn, a bird chirping or a human scream, the sounds around us attract our attention and can be as informative as speech, or even more so in certain situations (a fire alarm, for example)....