Compressive sensing (CS) promises to reduce the sampling burden for most signals of interest by exploiting their structure and the wide availability of inexpensive computation. While theoretical developments are promising, exploiting CS in practice poses significant challenges. In this talk will briefly present the basic compressive sensing theory and how it can be very useful in practical systems. We will examine several applications―such as ultrasonic sensing, microphone and radar array processing, and depth sensing―and discuss how CS ideas, when properly exploited, can significantly advance the capabilities of those systems.