A new project out of Germany is taking a new direction in safety features for self-driving cars. While the current autonomous vehicles appearing on our roadways are often outfitted with cameras and lidar systems, Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology’s Oldenburg Branch for Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology is experimenting with using microphones to let cars ‘hear’ hazards that might go unnoticed via camera.
Named the Hearing Car, the project utilizes AI systems to detect and classify sounds surrounding the vehicle to add another layer of safety. The Hearing Car team posit that this will allow the vehicle to quickly detect things like failing brakes and emergency vehicles. Modules containing three microphones are mounted at the rear of the car to minimize wind noise. Sounds captured by the modules are fed into a neural network, and are cross-checked against video captured by the vehicle.
While the team admits that it will take years before this technology becomes mainstream, the researchers agree that when dealing with safety, it’s best to approach the issue from all angles.
