> Inspired by apps like Shazam that recognize the voices of pop stars, they figured how to distinguish the sonic signature of sand from other sounds, like flowing oil.
It is interesting that the Music industry and Oil industry have a few connections through signal processing now. Andy Hildebrand, the inventor of autotune, developed it using ideas and methods imported from the oil industry[0]
> What “clicked” for Hildebrand was that he could utilize some of the very same processing methods he’d used in the oil industry to build a pitch correction tool.