Rethinking Acoustic Sensing: Challenges and Perspectives for Wearable Sensing in the wild

The ubiquitous presence of acoustic-enabled smart devices presents a fertile ground for active acoustic sensing. However, despite significant advances, ensuring its robust and reliable deployment in the wild remains a key challenge. In this paper, we point out and articulate three critical issues that hinder the practicality of active acoustic sensing: its susceptibility to irregular or self-induced movements, vulnerability to interference from unrelated actions, and limited ability to perform fine-grained activity recognition across a diverse range of users. To address these challenges, we present several forward-looking perspectives, suggesting that overcoming these challenges requires not only advancements in algorithms but also the selection of tasks better suited to acoustic sensing, ultimately unlocking its full potential and ensuring stable performance. Our work aims to spark deeper discussions on reliable and robust active acoustic sensing solutions.