If we had machines that could hear as humans do, we would expect them to be able to easily distinguish speech from music and background noises, to pull out the speech and music parts for special treatment, to know what direction sounds are coming from, to learn which noises are typical and which are noteworthy. Hearing machines should be able to listen and react in real time, to take appropriate action on hearing noteworthy events, to participate in ongoing activities.
In the September issue of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, Richard F.