Sony Patents Noise Cancellation AI For DualSense Haptic Rumble

Sony has found a way to use artificial intelligence to cancel noise components in a signal "created by haptics" of DualSense.

DualSense has a built-in microphone which players can use to communicate online without the need of a headset. Its new haptic feedback however can possibly result in an unwanted noise during gameplay to either interfere with or distort player-voice. Sony Interactive Entertainment has apparently found a solution to silence that noise for clean communications.

According to a published patent from earlier today, Sony has found a way to use artificial intelligence to cancel noise components in a signal “created by haptics or other electronics such as are found in computer gaming controllers.”

The patent further notes that such haptics may create motor sound noise which “can be difficult to remove or cancel because it can be broadband with a changing signal characteristic along time.”

With machine-based learning algorithms however, Sony can create a system to “generate an estimate of the motor magnetic noise, and then using the estimated motor magnetic noise as a reference signal with noise cancellation technologies to reduce, cancel, suppress, or remove it from the subject signal.”

Basically, what Sony is trying to do (or has done) is to first store the original signal which includes noise such as the kind created by the rumbling motor of the DualSense haptic sensors. AI then takes over and generates a second signal which replicates the original signal but without noise components. The system then uses the second, reference signal to remove “at least part of the noise” from the original signal.

This entire process will have to be done on the fly to ensure that players can continue speaking into their DualSense microphones without any noise or static.

Take note that DualSense already features a way to eliminate crosstalk and unwanted noise from the room. A linear array of multiple built-in microphones function in tandem to identify the player (user) and then exclude sounds being produced by the surrounding environment.

Saqib is a managing editor at segmentnext.com who has halted regime changes, curbed demonic invasions, and averted at least one cosmic omnicide from the confines of his gaming chair. When not whipping his writers into ...