# Active noise cancellation on open-ear smart glasses

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.05519 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05519/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 11 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Apr 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01507/) (2017)
- [Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04356/) (2022)
- [FiLM: Visual Reasoning with a General Conditioning Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.07871/) (2017)
- [MIMII Dataset: Sound Dataset for Malfunctioning Industrial Machine Investigation and Inspection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.09347/) (2019)
- [A scalable noisy speech dataset and online subjective test framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.08050/) (2019)
- [Acoustic Volume Rendering for Neural Impulse Response Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.06307/) (2024)
- [Semantic Hearing: Programming Acoustic Scenes with Binaural Hearables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.00320/) (2023)
- [Spatially Selective Active Noise Control Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.09997/) (2022)
- [Transferable Selective Virtual Sensing Active Noise Control Technique Based on Metric Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.05470/) (2024)
- [Spatially Selective Active Noise Control for Open-fitting Hearables with Acausal Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10372/) (2025)
- [Soft-Constrained Spatially Selective Active Noise Control for Open-fitting Hearables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12122/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [From Seeing to Acting: Smart Glasses as First-Person Intelligence Platforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.24877/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Active noise cancellation (ANC) is widely deployed on consumer headphones and earbuds to suppress environmental noise. However, existing ANC systems require an error microphone at the user's ear canal to measure residual sound, preventing deployment on emerging open-ear wearable devices such as smart glasses and VR headsets, which leave the ear unoccluded. Here we present an ANC system for open-ear wearables that suppresses environmental noise using only microphones and miniaturized open-ear speakers embedded within the frame of the wearables, removing the need for an in-ear error microphone. Our low-latency computational pipeline uses a neural network to estimate the noise at the ear from an array of eight microphones distributed around the wearable's frame and generates an anti-noise signal in real-time. This mapping generalizes to unseen users and acoustic environments without prior acoustic measurement. We develop a custom glasses prototype and evaluate across eleven unseen users and eight unseen environments under mobility in the 100 to 1000 Hz frequency range, where environmental noise is concentrated. We achieve a mean noise reduction of 9.6 dB without any calibration, and 11.2 dB with a brief user-specific calibration. Further, we demonstrate that our approach extends to the broader class of open-ear wearables including VR headsets and headbands.