Privacy-Aware Ambient Audio Sensing for Healthy Indoor Spaces

TL;DR

This paper proposes a privacy-preserving ambient audio sensing system that non-invasively monitors indoor air quality and transmission risk factors in real time, leveraging existing microphones to improve health safety.

Contribution

It introduces a novel privacy-aware ambient audio sensing approach for indoor air quality monitoring, addressing health risks without invasive methods.

Findings

Developed a privacy-preserving ambient audio sensing system

Demonstrated real-time indoor air quality estimation

Leveraged existing microphones for health monitoring

Abstract

Indoor airborne transmission poses a significant health risk, yet current monitoring solutions are invasive, costly, or fail to address it directly. My research explores the untapped potential of ambient audio sensing to estimate key transmission risk factors such as ventilation, aerosol emissions, and occupant distribution non-invasively and in real time. I develop privacy-preserving systems that leverage existing microphones to monitor the whole spectrum of indoor air quality which can have a significant effect on an individual's health. This work lays the foundation for privacy-aware airborne risk monitoring using everyday devices.