ANN ARBOR, MI -- Some people may worry their smart home devices are randomly listening to their private conversations, but what if there was a way to prevent that from happening?
A team of University of Michigan researchers have built a prototype device called the PrivacyMic to do just that.
“Most companies are trying to do the right thing, assuming that their customers’ best interest matches their best interest,” Alanson Sample, UM associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, said. “But there are certainly times where it could be hackers or maybe people are not being as responsible that could just be recording your information in bulk, right?”
PrivacyMic is a way to ensure that devices are only picking up information that is needed, and not all information that is produced by the consumer, Sample said. It works by capturing high frequency and ultrasound components above human hearing to then classify in real time what activity is going on and what services are needed, Sample said.
“What we’ve done is put a filter in there that guarantees, in hardware, before anything’s ever digitized, that you are only getting frequencies that humans can’t hear,” Sample said.
As a result, the device filters out audible information and has made it possible to infer what human activity is going on in a space with ultrasonic information instead, such as if someone is making breakfast in the morning by listening to the sound of cabinets opening and a stove turning on, Sample said.
Information like that can then be used to launch smart home devices that give users more privacy, and can even be used for medical research and so on, he said.
Sample has been with UM for three years and previously worked at Disney Research at a small facility on Carnegie Mellon University’s campus, where he met those who now work on PrivacyMic with him.
His research team includes, UM student Yasha Iravantchi, CMU faculty Mayank Goel and Chris Harrison, and CMU student Karan Ahuja.
Currently, there are an estimated 320 million smart speakers globally.
“We’re in a world that’s becoming ever more connected, and so we have internet connected devices throughout our homes, throughout our workplaces, but now we’re not really thinking about privacy first,” Sample said. “And so now we’re at a point where we’re saying, well, what are some minimum guarantees we can put on a hardware device to provide some privacy to the users?”
Now that a prototype has been made, the system can be deployed in a research setting for study.
“We’re looking to move to the next step, which would be a more refined platform that delivers value for a particular application. I’m particularly interested in the medical space,” Sample said. “So in general, what I’m looking for is collaborators who have a real application that’s interesting, and allows us to refine the hardware to that next step.”
More about PrivacyMic can be found here.
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