Professor Elliott's research interests have been mainly concerned with the connections between the physical world and digital signal processing.
The research was originally related to the active control of sound and vibration. This work has resulted in the demonstration of active control in cars, helicopters and propeller aircraft and the authorship of the books "Active Control of Sound" with P.A. Nelson, "Active Control of Vibration" with C.R. Fuller and P.A. Nelson and, most recently, "Signal Processing for Active Control".The active control research has traditionally involved the reduction of unwanted noise, most recently on luxury yachts, but has recently developed to the reproduction of sound signals, such as music, in specific regions of space, so that, for example, the driver of a car can listen to Radio 4, while a child in the back of the car can listen to a Disney DVD.He is also involved in working on the growing body of work on modelling the mechanics of the cochlea and the functioning of cochlear implants, as below. This is important not only for communication and speech processing systems, but also in order to help understand the causes of hearing impairment and how they might be overcome.
