Our vision is to manipulate sound waves using advances in acoustic meta-materials to create novel interactive applications. We see an opportunity to be the world leaders in the design, manufacturing and distribution of Spatial Sound Modulators (SSM) to shape the complex sound fields. SSMs can be ubiquitous as LCDs.
Our focus within this PoC has been:
a) To create a systematic overview of application opportunities for spatial sound modulators
Through a series of brainstorming sessions and externally facilitated design sessions we assembled a group of experts in metamaterials and SSMs to develop a systematic overview of application opportunities. Through this systematic overview we identified specific opportunities around noise cancellation, energy harvesting and other consumer applications.
Metasonixx was incoprorated in 2019 as a spin-out company of the Universities of Sussex and Bristol with Gianluca Memoli and Bruce Drinkwater. The PI (Subramanian) has joined the company as a shareholder. The company focuses on solutions that manage desired sounds and cancel unwanted noise, exploiting its four patents on acoustic metamaterials (UK1702131.2 UK1800286.5 UK1905258.8 PCT/GB2020/050948).
b) To create a prototype to demonstrate noise reduction and energy harvesting capabilities,
We developed multiple prototypes to demonstrate these capabilities. A product designer helped us to create visualizations of what our technology could do in “real life” applications. Mr Bonoldi will now be the first employee of the company.
Alongside this, our postdoctoral researcher is also creating energy harvesting prototypes and testing the fidelity of these prototypes. Our unique selling point is our ability to combine computational holography with energy harvesting for multiple IoT maket space. Finally, we are also engaging in early conversations with different industry partners to develop an exploitation strategy.
Our next steps are to seek additional funding to develop the business models further and explore commercial exploitation of the energy harvesting idea and see how this fits with the noise cancellation idea that is being nurtured by Metasonixx.
