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This paper introduces a real-time active noise cancellation (ANC) system for open-ear smart glasses, addressing the challenge of hearing in noisy environments due to the unsealed ear canal. They estimate noise at the ear using an array of eight microphones distributed around the glasses frame and generate an anti-noise signal via miniaturized open-ear speakers. Experimental results on a custom glasses prototype demonstrate a mean noise reduction of 9.6 dB without calibration and 11.2 dB with user-specific calibration in the 100-1000 Hz range.
Open-ear smart glasses can now achieve >11dB noise reduction with a real-time active noise cancellation system, despite lacking a sealed ear canal.
Smart glasses are becoming an increasingly prevalent wearable platform, with audio as a key interaction modality. However, hearing in noisy environments remains challenging because smart glasses are equipped with open-ear speakers that do not seal the ear canal. Furthermore, the open-ear design is incompatible with conventional active noise cancellation (ANC) techniques, which rely on an error microphone inside or at the entrance of the ear canal to measure the residual sound heard after cancellation. Here we present the first real-time ANC system for open-ear smart glasses that suppresses environmental noise using only microphones and miniaturized open-ear speakers embedded in the glasses frame. Our low-latency computational pipeline estimates the noise at the ear from an array of eight microphones distributed around the glasses frame and generates an anti-noise signal in real-time to cancel environmental noise. We develop a custom glasses prototype and evaluate it in a user study across 8 environments under mobility in the 100--1000 Hz frequency range, where environmental noise is concentrated. We achieve a mean noise reduction of 9.6 dB without any calibration, and 11.2 dB with a brief user-specific calibration.
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