Spider silk-inspired environmentally adaptive intelligent graphene artificial throat

Abstract

Sound, as one of nature’s most ubiquitous and efficient modes of interaction, faces a paradoxical challenge: it is highly susceptible to environmental noise interference while simultaneously capable of disturbing quiet environments. This dichotomy underscores the critical need for adaptive acoustic technologies. Here, we developed a spider silk-inspired graphene-artificial-throat (GAT) system capable of dynamically adjusting its sensitivity to ambient acoustic conditions. The GAT leverages mechanical strain modulation to operate in both high-sensitivity and low-sensitivity modes, enabling clear speech recognition in quiet environments and efficient noise filtering in noisy settings. The dynamic range (DR) of the device is calculated to be 8.12 dB, which refers to the sensitivity range of the device. This range ensures the device can adapt to and perform effectively under varying environmental conditions. The GAT achieved a speech recognition accuracy of 91.07 % under 80 dB of white noise. Furthermore, we integrated the GAT into a binaural auditory system for robots, where strain-tunable GATs were used for signal differentiation, enabling precise sound localization with an accuracy of 99.42 %. The proposed GAT offers a versatile solution for human communication and robotic auditory perception, providing robust performance in a wide range of real-world applications.