'Wolverine', Google's classified project to achieve superhuman hearing

Wolverine is a top-secret Google project that seeks to give people improved hearing thanks to a small device.

Google is working on a top-secret project called "Wolverine." It is a device that would provide people with improved hearing ability. For example, you could "segregate speech" to hear a particular person out of the crowd. The division in charge of development is X Development, the same one that started the development of the company's autonomous vehicles in 2010.

The first thing that catches the attention of this project is its name, although, due to its purpose, it makes sense. According to Engadget, the project began in 2018 and, since then, multiple prototypes of a device have been created that "explore the future of hearing." This is the relationship between the work that Google is doing and the superfine ear of the Marvel character.

Google and the challenges of its 'Wolverine' project

One of the characteristics that the device of the "Wolverine" project must have is to be small enough so that the user can wear it comfortably in the ears. In addition, its hardware must have several sensors and microphones.

Google's wearable, which is not yet named, could have several uses, although the "speech segregation" capability is mentioned. That is, it would be able to allow the user to listen to a particular speaker in an environment where several people are speaking and the conversations overlap.

"Wolverine" is serious and has experts on his team. The project is spearheaded by Jason Rugolo, a former head of the government agency ARPA-E who joined X Development in 2017. Eargo hearing aid company founder Raphael Michel also joined the team, which has gained interest. by Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google and current president of Alphabet, the parent company of the former.

However, this Google project is at an early stage. Since its inception devices have been built that covered the entire ear or protruded above it. Indeed, one of the challenges of "Wolverine" is to incorporate several microphones in small hardware.

This is not the first — nor the last — project that X Development has developed. In the past, there have been Google Glass and Loon, the ambitious project that sought to provide Internet in rural areas with balloons, or the autonomous vehicle technology used in Waymo.