Event2Audio: Event-Based Optical Vibration Sensing

Abstract: Small vibrations observed in video can unveil information beyond what is visual, such as sound and material properties. It is possible to passively record these vibrations when they are visually perceptible, or actively amplify their visual contribution with a laser beam when they are not perceptible. In this paper, we improve upon the active sensing approach by leveraging event-based cameras, which are designed to efficiently capture fast motion. We demonstrate our method experimentally by recovering audio from vibrations, even for multiple simultaneous sources, and in the presence of environmental distortions. Our approach matches the state-of-the-art reconstruction quality at much faster speeds, approaching real-time processing.