It’s an experience we’ve all had: Whether catching up with a friend over dinner at a restaurant, meeting an interesting person at a cocktail party, or conducting a meeting amid office commotion, we find ourselves having to shout over background chatter and general noise. The human ear and brain are not especially good at identifying separate sources of sound in a noisy environment to focus on a particular conversation. This ability deteriorates further with general hearing loss, which is becoming more prevalent as people live longer, and can lead to social isolation.
However, a team of researchers from the University of Washington, Microsoft, and Assembly AI have just shown that AI can outdo humans in isolating sound sources to create a zone of silence. This sound bubble allows people within a radius of up to 2 meters to converse with hugely reduced interference from other speakers or noise outside the zone.
The group, led by University of Washington professor Shyam Gollakota, aims to combine AI with hardware to augment human capabilities. This is different, Gollakota says, from working with enormous computational resources such as those ChatGPT employs; rather, the challenge is to create useful AI applications within the limits of hardware constraints, particularly for mobile or wearable use. Gollakota has long thought that what has been called the “cocktail party problem” is a widespread issue where this approach could be feasible and beneficial.
Currently, commercially available noise-cancelling headsets suppress background noise but do not compensate for distances to the sound sources or other issues such as reverberations in enclosed spaces. Previous studies, however, have shown that neural networks achieve better separation of sound sources than conventional signal processing. Building on this finding, Gollakota’s group designed an integrated hardware-AI “hearable” system that analyzes audio data to clearly identify sound sources within and without a designated bubble size. The system then suppresses extraneous sounds in real time so there is no perceptible lag between what users hear, and what they see while watching the person speaking.
The audio part of the system is a commercial noise-cancelling headset with up to six microphones that detect nearby and more distant sounds, providing data for neural network analysis. Custom-built networks find the distances to sound sources and determine which of them lay inside a programmable bubble radius of 1 m, 1.5 m, or 2 m. These networks were trained with both simulated and real-world data, taken in 22 rooms of varied sizes and sound-absorbing qualities with different combinations of human subjects. The algorithm runs on a small embedded CPU, either the Orange Pi or Raspberry Pi, and sends processed data back to the headphones in milliseconds, fast enough to keep hearing and vision in sync.
Hear the difference between a conversation with the noise-cancelling headset turned on and off. Malek Itani and Tuochao Chen/Paul G. Allen School/University of Washington
The algorithm in this prototype reduced the sound volume outside the empty bubble by 49 dB, to approximately 0.001 percent of the intensity recorded inside the bubble. Even in new acoustic environments and with different users, the system functioned well for up to two speakers in the bubble and one or two interfering outside speakers, even if they were louder. It also accommodated the arrival of a new speaker inside the bubble.
It’s easy to imagine applications of the system in customizable noise-cancelling devices, especially where clear and effortless verbal communication is needed in a noisy environment. The dangers of social isolation are well known, and a technology specifically designed to enhance person-to-person communication could help. Gollakota believes there’s value in simply helping a person focus their auditory and spatial attention for personal interaction.
Sound bubble technology could also eventually be integrated into hearing aids. Both Google and Swiss hearing-aid manufacturer Phonak have added AI elements to their earbuds and hearing aids, respectively. Gollakota is now considering how to put the sound bubble approach into a comfortably wearable hearing aid format. For that to happen, the device would have to fit into earbuds or a behind-each-ear configuration, wirelessly communicate between the left and right units, and operate all day on tiny batteries.
Gollakota is confident that this can be done. “We are at a time when hardware and algorithms are coming together to support AI augmentation,” he says. “This is not about AI replacing jobs, but about having a positive impact on people through a human-computer interface.”
OpenAI's ChatGPT is more than just an AI language model with a fancy interface. It's a system consisting of a stack of AI models and content filters that make sure its outputs don't embarrass OpenAI or get the company into legal trouble when its bot occasionally makes up facts about people that may be harmful.
Recently, that reality made the news when people discovered that the name "David Mayer" breaks ChatGPT. 404 Media also discovered that the names "Jonathan Zittrain" and "Jonathan Turley" caused ChatGPT to cut conversations short. And we know another name, likely the first, that started the practice last year: Brian Hood. More on that below.
The chat-breaking behavior occurs consistently when users mention these names in any context, and it results from a hard-coded filter that puts the brakes on the AI model's output before returning it to the user.
Companies have been discussing migrating off of VMware since Broadcom’s takeover a year ago led to higher costs and other controversial changes. Now we have an inside look at one of the larger customers that recently made the move.
According to a report from The Register today, Beeks Group, a cloud operator headquartered in the United Kingdom, has moved most of its 20,000-plus virtual machines (VMs) off VMware and to OpenNebula, an open source cloud and edge computing platform. Beeks Group sells virtual private servers and bare metal servers to financial service providers. It still has some VMware VMs, but “the majority” of its machines are currently on OpenNebula, The Register reported.
Beeks’ head of production management, Matthew Cretney, said that one of the reasons for Beeks migration was a VMware bill for “10 times the sum it previously paid for software licenses,” per The Register.
Connecting every school to the Internet is a monumental challenge that until recently no one had dared to tackle—in part because not all countries can even pin down the location of all their schools. But a new joint initiative from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and UNICEF seeks to fill that gap. Dubbed Giga, the Geneva-based program has undertaken an ambitious mission to map and link up 6 million schools worldwide that are still offline by 2030.
The program’s initial results include mapping one-third of the world’s schools—as well as connecting and digitally enhancing the learning experience of nearly eight million students from remote, marginalized, and rural communities across 141 countries.
“Giga is a lasting commitment to closing the educational gap while bridging the digital divide,” says Doreen Bogdan-Martin, who kickstarted the program five years ago at the ITU’s Telecommunication Development Sector. Now, as secretary general of the UN tech agency, she advocates “universal and meaningful connectivity” for the 2.7 billion people worldwide still cut off from the Internet, 360 million of them young.
With the cost of achieving this goal set at US $428 billion, the project’s success now hinges on Giga’s ability to innovate. The organization’s headquarters in Geneva is currently, for instance, investigating connectivity credit markets—that would create, according to Giga’s website, incentives akin to the carbon credits marketplace in the sustainable energy world.
Meanwhile, Giga has set up in a former textile mill in Barcelona what it dubs “the largest research center worldwide developing open-source software to support school connectivity.”
The 30 computer scientists at Giga’s Catalan center have, for one, developed an innovative infrastructure mapping and modeling tool.
How to Find the World’s Schools
The team begins with high-resolution satellite imagery from industry partners like Maxar Technologies.
They next ask countries to divulge details about national electricity grids, fiber-optic cable routes, and other critical infrastructure. These have proven at times more reliable than the data turned up by ministries of education, telecom regulators, and local ISPs. “Countries frequently supply only city names without exact geographical coordinates, making precise mapping difficult,” says Gregori Mora Cogul, ITU Lead at Giga Barcelona.
Giga uses machine learning models on these digital assets, models trained to pick out images of schools by recognizing unique features like playgrounds or a football pitch. Images of potential school locations are also cross-referenced with data from government censuses, OpenStreetMap (OSM), and Overture Maps.
Then, after pinpointing the geolocation of these candidate schools, local personnel are often summoned to travel out to the often remote locations and verify first-hand the potential educational facilities that the machine learning model had surfaced.
Connecting Is Another Matter
Mora says the organization then works to help connect the schools either by fiber-optic cable (even going so far as to generate cost-efficient fiber optic pathways). On the other hand, schools in regions with less fiber-optic availability require other tech. If a school happens to be less than 1 kilometer from the nearest cell tower, they’re connected using cellular modems. Point-to-point microwave links are also an option, as well as, for the most remote locations, very-small aperture terminal (VSAT) or other broadband satellite connections.
“We are basically helping audit existing connections,” says Mora.
The schools Giga connects use an app developed by Giga to maintain that connection and fine-tune it with data on the school’s connectivity throughout a school day.
”You know how many kilometers of fiber you’re going to deploy, how many switches, splitters, and other equipment you’ll need,” says Walid Mathlouthi, global lead of infrastructure mapping contribution to the project with ITU’s Future Networks and Spectrum Management.
“Schools will be an anchor point as their connection will benefit communities and the population along the fiber path,” says Irene Kaggwa Sewankambo, Giga’s program manager. Botswana, for example, integrated Giga into its national digital development program and aims to bring high speed Internet to hospitals and the to the “kgotla”—the public consultation places in rural areas where people interact with the tribal administration. And this, in turn, allows communities to “[adapt] traditional spaces to serve the modern times,” says the country’s ambassador to the United Nations, Athaliah Lesiba Molokomme.
So far Giga has assisted Benin, Botswana, Brazil, Namibia, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, and Zimbabwe on infrastructure mapping—while 34 countries in all that have to date been involved with the project.
When I was eight years old, I won a coloring contest that earned me a free birthday party at my hometown Chuck E. Cheese. We don’t have any photos from the event because, as my mother recalls, it was absolute mayhem. Kids were running from room to room playing video games and Skee-Ball. The adults couldn’t corral anyone for pizza and cake. And then there was the show: The animatronic rat Charles “Entertainment” Cheese and the Pizza Time Players entertained—or terrified—attendees with their songs and corny banter.
That may have been the last time I entered a Chuck E. Cheese pizzeria. And yet, when I heard that the company was phasing out the animatronic bands from all but five locations by the end of this year, I felt a twinge of nostalgia. Much to my surprise, I was truly sad that the moving dolls are being replaced by video screens, dance floors, and trampolines. Consider this my ode to the era of animatronics.
How Chuck E. Cheese Got Its Start
Nolan Bushnell, a founder of Atari, opened the first Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theatre in San Jose, Calif., in 1977. His goal was simple: He wanted to vertically integrate the arcade market. Bushnell was familiar with the economics of coin-operated games; his company had hit it big with Pong, Breakout, and other games. At the time, Atari was selling its arcade games for US $1,500 to $2,000 each, but the real money was in the $50,000 in coins that a game would take in over its lifetime. Bushnell didn’t just want to produce the machines; he wanted to collect the quarters, too.
Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell opened the first Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theatre in 1977. Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis/Getty Images
According to Bushnell’s 2017 oral history with the Archives Center of the National Museum of American History, he was inspired by a popular pizza joint called Pizza and Pipes, which had a Wurlitzer theater organ that lit up as it played. His kids loved the music and light show, but the organist often didn’t work on weekdays. Bushnell decided to take this idea one step further by adding video games. He figured that while patrons waited the 20 or so minutes for their pizza, they could play arcade games and watch a show. He just needed to figure out what the show would be.
Further inspiration hit when he visited Disneyland and saw its many animatronic creations. Animatronics often include electronic, mechanical, hydraulic, and pneumatic parts. The character’s head and arms generally move freely, but it can’t walk from one place to another. Walt Disney’s Imagineers had pioneered audio-animatronics, which they described in one of their patents as a “robotic figure, puppet, or other movable object that is animated via one or more electromechanical devices.” (Unlike today’s robot designs, none of the animatronics of the ’60s and ’70s were truly interactive; all of the songs and conversation were prerecorded and synched with movements through computer programming.)
Bushnell had an “aha” moment when he entered Disneyland’s Enchanted Tiki Room, which featured four talking macaws as emcees and a cast of over 150 singing birds, drumming Tikis, rhyming Polynesian gods, and crooning flowers. A large control room with banks of floor-to-ceiling computers, relays, and pneumatic pumps was required to coordinate the figures’ sounds and movements, as shown in this vintage video clip:
Now all Bushnell needed was a mascot. At a trade show for amusement parks (yes, of course, there’s such a thing), he bought a full-body costume of what he thought was a coyote—Coyote Pizza had a good ring to it—and gave it to his engineers with the task: “Make this guy talk.”
The engineers did as instructed, but the costume turned out to be a rat, not a coyote. Bushnell rolled with it, and suggested changing the name of the pizzeria to Rick Rat’s Pizza. But the marketing team balked, saying no one would want to eat food associated with rats. They took a week to brainstorm new names and came back with Chuck E. Cheese. It was a “three-smile name,” they said, because you smiled three times when you said it. With the name change and a bit of a character makeover, they launched the new business.
The restaurant opened with the eponymous rat and several other animatronic characters, which they termed cyberamics in later iterations of the show. In the original installation, the characters were showcased in faux picture frames on the walls surrounding the main dining area, mimicking a theater in the round, as shown in this clip:
Pasqually, the pizza chef, would pop out from behind a set of doors to sing the praises of his food. Jasper T. Jowls played the banjo. Crusty the Cat shared a wall with Chuck. And a curtain would rise to reveal the soulful magpies, the Warblettes. A rotating roster of special guests, including the singing hippo Dolli Dimples, filled out the show.
The characters performed six two-minute shows per hour. Banks of pneumatic valves caused the players to wave their arms, blink their eyes, and move their heads. At times, there could be more than 200 movements happening at once. Two-track synchronized audio tapes, one for the sound and one for the data signals, controlled the characters. Programming was done on a Digital Equipment Corp. minicomputer, and it took approximately three hours of programming for every minute of animation.
Chuck E. Cheese Gets a Rival: ShowBiz Pizza
The restaurant was a success, bringing in $500,000 in its first year (about $2.5 million today). Even so, other pizza purveyors were skeptical of the concept. In the 25 December 1978 issue of Business Week, Donald Smith, executive vice-president of Shakey’s, noted that his pizza parlor chain, which had pioneered live bands that patrons could sing along to, was shifting away from such entertainment. In the same article, John Hollingsworth, president of the company that owned Straw Hat Pizza, said the jury was still out on whether Chuck E. Cheese would succeed. After all, he speculated, they would have to compete with the growing sophistication of home video games.
Bushnell wanted to grow the business, but he wasn’t fully in charge of Atari any more. The previous year the company had been sold to Warner Communications, and although the original restaurant was part of the deal, Warner didn’t want to be in the food business. So Bushnell bought Chuck E. Cheese and developed it on his own.
To expand beyond California, Bushnell decided to franchise the business. That’s where things got messy. In 1979 he signed an agreement with businessman Robert Brock to build 200 restaurants in 16 midwest and southern states. At the time, Brock owned the largest franchise of Holiday Inn hotels in the country and had the capital and lines of credit to invest in Chuck E. Cheese; Bushnell was financing his share of the enterprise with his own money from the sale of Atari.
But before Brock even opened his first restaurant, he wanted out of the contract. Brock had discovered Aaron Fechter and his company, Creative Engineering Inc., which manufactured high-end animatronics for amusement parks. In Brock’s view, CEI’s characters were vastly superior to Chuck E. Cheese and the gang. Lawsuits (breach of contract) and countersuits (misrepresentation) ensued.
In 1980, Brock started ShowBiz Pizza as a direct competitor to Chuck E. Cheese with more or less the same format: a pizza place with an animatronic show and video-arcade games. CEI provided the show, called Rock-afire Explosion. The band featured Fatz Geronimo, a gorilla, on keyboard; Mitzi Mozzarella, a cheerleading mouse, on vocals; Beach Bear on guitar; and Dook LaRue, a dog in a spacesuit, on drums. Billy Bob Brockali, a brown bear in red and yellow overalls, served as ShowBiz Pizza’s mascot. Here, the band gives its version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”:
I’m not sure I ever visited a ShowBiz Pizza, but I did see Rock-afire Explosion’s predecessor band, Wolf Pack 5, at Livingston’s, a restaurant at the Kings Dominion amusement park in Doswell, Va. My family always ate at that pavilion, not because of the animatronics, but because it was one of the few air-conditioned oases at the park. Although we were only trying to find relief from the summer heat, it turned out that air conditioning played a vital part in animatronic shows. The Enchanted Tiki Room was also the first air-conditioned pavilion at Disneyland due to the heat that the mechanics and electronics gave off.
The evolution of Chuck E. Cheese
By the mid-1980s, Chuck E. Cheese was operating in the red. As it turns out, manufacturing and operating animatronics is very expensive, and the great video-game crash of 1983 didn’t help. Chuck E. Cheese filed for bankruptcy, and Brock purchased it and merged the two restaurant chains into ShowBiz Pizza Time. The different animatronic shows continued to operate through the end of the decade, but in 1990, when Fechter refused to sell the rights for the Rock-afire characters to ShowBiz, Brock’s company launched what it called “concept unification.” It rebranded the Rock-afire characters as Munch’s Make Believe Band and merged them into Chuck E. Cheese’s ensemble so that all 262 restaurants had the same thematic animatronics. Over the next few years, the ShowBiz Pizza locations were rebranded as Chuck E. Cheese locations.
Not everyone took the rebranding well. The 2008 documentary The Rock-afire Explosion follows several dedicated fans who rescued and renovated complete stage sets. It includes extended interviews with Aaron Fechter, who offers his own perspective on the rise and fall of animatronic restaurants. As Fechter walks the viewer through his once-bustling factory and warehouse, you can see how much love he had for the development of the characters and the employees who brought them to life. You also appreciate the complexity of the manufacturing process, including mold making, painting, and costume design; it’s clear that animatronics are expensive to produce even before any programming takes place.
As the children who encountered either Chuck E. Cheese or Rock-afire Explosion aged into adulthood, the animatronics of their youth began to pop up in other popular culture forms. The video game Five Nights at Freddy’s, launched in 2014, featured security guards at a pizza restaurant who have to fend off animatronic characters gone rogue. In 2023, in season 16 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the gang heads to Risk E. Rat’s Pizza and Amusement Center—clearly a play on Bushnell’s discarded name—only to find the riskiness replaced by safety. Chuck E. Cheese is referenced directly in several episodes of The Simpsons, but Bart also celebrates his birthday at Wall E. Weasel’s, where the animatronic SeƱor Beaverotti breaks down and catches fire.
It took almost 50 years, but video screens have finally won out over animatronics. The curtain is closing on Mr. Munch and his Make Believe Band. I guess that’s what today’s kids want, but they’ll never get a chance to appreciate the quirky weirdness my generation loved about animatronics.
Part of acontinuing serieslooking at historical artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of technology.
An abridged version of this article appears in the December 2024 print issue as “Farewell, My Animatronic Friends.”
References
Both Chuck E. Cheese and ShowBiz Pizza have dedicated fanbases, and those fans have pulled together amazing primary source materials ontheirwebsites, including company newsletters, service and technical manuals for the animatronic shows, and newspaper and magazine articles from the time.
The Archives Center’s 2017 oral history with Nolan Bushnell offers one side of the animatronics story, while Brett Whitcomb’s documentary The Rock-afire Explosion offers a different perspective.
In my columns throughout the year, I have shared my priorities for my presidency. These include the need for IEEE to increase its retention of younger members and to engage with industry. I also committed to working to increase the organization’s outreach to the broader public and to cultivating an environment that fosters the development of new products and services for our members and customers.
These priorities served as the basis for my activities, as well as for the creation of our task forces and ad hoc committees for the year. I collaborated with colleagues and encouraged organizational units that are focused on these topics to take the lead in developing action plans that will guide us toward our goals.
Through my engagements around the globe this year, I had the opportunity to interact with both members and non-members, learning about the differences in cultures, activities, and opportunities within our vast geographical and technical communities. I discovered our members retain their memberships for various reasons—both transactional and aspirational.
Some members remain for discounts and access to resources, products, and services that interest them. Others stay for the opportunities to develop communication, leadership, and collaboration skills. Our volunteers often cite their commitment to furthering IEEE’s mission of advancing technology for the benefit of humanity and how volunteering allows them to do something in support of others.
I also heard directly from young professionals in diverse industries about their specific needs and how we can ensure their IEEE membership remains relevant and valuable throughout their career.
No matter an individual’s reason for remaining a member, I have personally witnessed that the more we engage with IEEE and our community, the greater the value we derive from our membership.
Lifelong professional home
An essential element of retaining our students and young professionals, and thus keeping IEEE relevant and vital, is creating a sense of community among IEEE members, particularly at the local section level. This includes fostering a welcoming environment where the next generation can embrace IEEE as their professional home. As they become more deeply engaged with IEEE, our collective community can help meet their long-term technical and professional needs at every stage of their career journey.
IEEE can also play a crucial role in helping to create a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive engineering and technology workforce for the future. Technology can benefit all, and thus all should participate in the creation and use of technology to improve the human condition and the world around us. The complexity of the technical and social challenges we face demands insights and creative solutions from all humans. Additionally, technology can create new wealth. Engaging with technology and its applications can help individuals from all backgrounds build better lives for themselves and their families.
Let’s get practical
During the past year, I have made a concerted effort to meet with industry leaders around the world and to share information about the value that IEEE provides to individuals who put technology into practice—both at the company and employee level and to connect these companies with our Industry Engagement Committee. Since many of our student and young professional members work in various industries, it follows that better engagement with industry and with those working on the practical implementation of technology will help us find ways to retain more of these younger members.
Amplifying IEEE’s reach
It is essential that we tell the story of IEEE by sharing the impact our members, products, and services have around the globe—not only how the organization has helped us in our careers but also how it benefits all of humanity. I have shared this myself and encourage all members to be ambassadors for IEEE, letting the world know who we are and what we do.
By promoting outreach to the public on the importance and impact of engineering and technology and the professionals working in these fields, advocating for education in engineering and computing, and connecting with other organizations that are actively working in these spaces, we can reinforce IEEE’s position as the world’s trusted source for information and insights on emerging technology and marketplace trends.
Driving innovation for 140 years
I am honored to serve as IEEE President in 2024 as we celebrate its 140th anniversary. My interactions with members and volunteers from around the world throughout the year have truly enriched my life and reaffirmed for me the tremendous value of being part of the international IEEE community and what we can accomplish by working together.
During the past 140 years, members and their colleagues—supported by IEEE conferences, publications, standards, recognitions, educational activities, and professional communities—have produced innumerable discoveries and inventions that have improved our world. We have brought together the best minds in engineering, created the spaces for sharing their work; and cultivated innovators, entrepreneurs, teachers, and leaders to advance technology for the benefit of humanity.