The Little Seal Bug: Optical Sound Recovery from Lightweight Reflective Objects
summary
Shows that passive lightweight shiny objects (empty can, Rubik’s cube, venetian blinds, phone stand) vibrate with nearby speech and allow intelligible recovery using a telescope-mounted photodiode + A/D and DSP (bandpass filters, spectral subtraction, equalizer). Demonstrations recoverable in real time: intelligible sentences at 15–35 m LOS when object sits ~25 cm from speaker, and loud virtual‑meeting audio at 75 dB; visual‑mic replication at 95 dB and 2.5 m. Requires line of sight and ambient illumination, reflective uncoated surface; quality scales with optics and ADC and needs DSP expertise.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Introduction and agenda
- 1:08Historical context and overview
- 4:00Survey of eavesdropping methods
- 10:13The Little Seal Bug model
- 11:38Physical phenomena and validation
- 15:50Signal processing and recovery
- 18:10Experimental results
- 24:14Comparative performance analysis
- 28:10Limitations and considerations
- 29:59Takeaways and future outlook
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