BMW: Sound of the Future.
When Noise Becomes Language.
With the introduction of electric mobility, we have the historic opportunity to bring calmness to our cities. With increasing autonomy, we also need to rethink communication in traffic.
What is the intuitive sound of electric vehicles?
When redesigning the way cars and other electric vehicles emit sound, we start with a blank sheet. While the combustion engine created an inevitably noisy soundscape in modern cities by design, any sound emitted by an electric engine has to be thought as an element of communication. Structurally, this resembles a language, as sound is an important element to safely navigate the urban space.
The sound of any vehicle conducts important information about its location, speed, and direction.
Since pedestrians, cyclists and motorists share the streets in a high-stakes cohabitation, in-traffic communication has produced a broad range of facets. Any adult has developed a hyper-sensitive ability to predict the behavior of other actors in traffic. These projections are based, of course, on traffic laws, but also on various visible and auditive cues. Some of the more obvious are hand and light signs, eye contact, and honks. But these form only the conscious part of communication in traffic. We are also trained to predict movement patterns and individual driver and pedestrian behavior, by car type, age, and other observations.
In our research, we propose a language and communication-based solution to the question of the sound of electric vehicles. From a psycho-acoustical standpoint, at least equally important to providing safety for pedestrians, considering noise pollution as the second most important factor in developing this framework is necessary.
As vehicles in urban areas mostly move together, most of the emitted noise has no communicational value and creates the noisy environment that is the characteristic sound scape of the city.
The most consequential approach to redesigning the sound of vehicles is to strip away any noise that bears no communicational value. A simple example, which applies to especially noisy areas most, are cars moving in convoys or pushing slowly through jammed traffic. Only the sound of the first car carries valuable information to passers-by. The sound emitted by the following cars only adds to the already masked sounds of the urban noisescape.
"Unlike air pollution, which most major European cities are now starting to tackle, noise has been ignored for decades as the problem has worsened and the negative impacts on society have increased."
Nina Renshaw / T&E Research
One might think that noise exposure in city would have been decreasing, as the availability of electric sharing vehicles, from cars to scooters, has increased drastically in the last few years, as well as the number of individually owned electric cars has risen. In reality, larger cars with bigger engines, and generally increased traffic volume has contributed more noise pollution to the urban environment than the named benefactors could take away. A wide range of medical studies shows the immense negative impact on health, just as other studies prove that the noisy environment also has negative implications for urban communities. As accident fatality rates are mostly stagnating, and nearly all improvements can be accounted to safety legislations like helmets and safety-belts, we can assume that the noise emitted by car engines are not exactly first-class instruments in establishing safe roads. From this standpoint, the policy by EU-legislative, obliging manufacturers to implement sound devices into their cars from 2019 on, comes off as quite retrograde. From a pedestrian or cyclist perspective, the new policy is a useful and straightforward measure. From a societal and health perspective, it can be almost rated as ignorant, as it provides very limited further guidance on the design of the sound. This has led many car manufacturers to deepen their already extensive push in customer-first product development, disregarding the interest of any person not traveling inside the vehicle, for leveraging the new legislation as an advertisement-instrument.
The European Environment Agency blames 10.000 premature deaths, 43.000 hospital admissions, and 900.000 cases of hypertension a year in Europe on noise. The most pervasive source is road-traffic noise: 125 million Europeans experience levels greater than 55 decibels – thought to be harmful to health – day, evening and night.
The sound should only be emitted, when it actually necessary and serves a communicational purpose.
Almost any electric cars already provide the hardware necessary for an adaptive sound framework. Already a simple onboard system with quite simple computer-vision abilities is sufficient can drastically improve pedestrian safety and also erase most of its contribution to the noise pollution of urban areas. Still, it needs to be addressed, that beyond 30km/h, the noise level of the rolling tires surpasses the sound of the engine. This, of course, does not apply to sequences of acceleration, where the engine sounds are far louder.
In the near future, advanced sensory systems can be used to implement a thoroughly developed sound-language. Companies like Tesla, already equip all their cars with essential self-driving capabilities, which are disabled depending on local legislation. With these technologies already in place, it is time for car manufactures to take responsibility for the emitted noise and the health risks and consequences involved.
Dynamic factors should influence the sound a car emits, just as information about the area, time of the day and season can be used to improve targetting and pollution.
Besides dynamic factors, like the presence and movement of pedestrians and cyclists, already simple environmental factors like time could be used to modulate the emitted sounds. In night time higher frequencies could be used, that travel less far and are blocked-out by glass-windows, to not disturb local residents in their sleep. This also could apply to roads and areas around schools, as children are more sensitive to higher frequencies and are also one of the most vulnerable traffic participants.
From a commercial stand-point, this framework also has great potential for manufacturers, as hearably addressing the societal reality of urban traffic and car ownership could be immensely beneficial to the companies images. In the light of the series of scandals that involved criminally cheating around air pollution limitations and extensively fiddling with emission data, this could be a valuable turning point to improving the hardened opinions about the industry.
The area of human hearing perception consists of many areas that are sensitive to different types of sounds which can be melodic or rhythmic. The way these sounds influence stress levels largely depends on its volume, but also on a wide range of psychoacoustic factors, like loudness and roughness. The science of Psychoacoustics is very profound, while it is largely ignored by companies producing sound-emitting vehicles. Most railroad companies have started to showed interest in decreasing noise volumes from a scientific standpoint, as they are solely responsible for the noise distributed by their trains.
Qualitative visualization of the area of human hearing perception and common types of sound.
The psychoacoustic framework can be used to accurately place different elements of situation-aware car-human communication to increase pedestrian safety and readability of the sound, but also be used to eliminate noises that pose serious risks to local residents and human health in general.
Our framework provides a broad range of possible implementations. It can be implemented holistically, or by individual elements. It also targets the interests of car owners, pedestrians, cyclists and local residents of affected areas alike.
Contextualizing Technology
office@same.vision
+49 30 2885 2595
Cotheniusstr. 6
D-10407 Berlin
BMW: Sound of the Future.
When Noise Becomes Language.
With the introduction of electric mobility, we have the historic opportunity to bring calmness to our cities. With increasing autonomy, we also need to rethink communication in traffic.
What is the intuitive sound of electric vehicles?
When redesigning the way cars and other electric vehicles emit sound, we start with a blank sheet. While the combustion engine created an inevitably noisy soundscape in modern cities by design, any sound emitted by an electric engine has to be thought as an element of communication. Structurally, this resembles a language, as sound is an important element to safely navigate the urban space.
The sound of any vehicle conducts important information about its location, speed, and direction.
Since pedestrians, cyclists and motorists share the streets in a high-stakes cohabitation, in-traffic communication has produced a broad range of facets. Any adult has developed a hyper-sensitive ability to predict the behavior of other actors in traffic. These projections are based, of course, on traffic laws, but also on various visible and auditive cues. Some of the more obvious are hand and light signs, eye contact, and honks. But these form only the conscious part of communication in traffic. We are also trained to predict movement patterns and individual driver and pedestrian behavior, by car type, age, and other observations.
In our research, we propose a language and communication-based solution to the question of the sound of electric vehicles. From a psycho-acoustical standpoint, at least equally important to providing safety for pedestrians, considering noise pollution as the second most important factor in developing this framework is necessary.
As vehicles in urban areas mostly move together, most of the emitted noise has no communicational value and creates the noisy environment that is the characteristic sound scape of the city.
The most consequential approach to redesigning the sound of vehicles is to strip away any noise that bears no communicational value. A simple example, which applies to especially noisy areas most, are cars moving in convoys or pushing slowly through jammed traffic. Only the sound of the first car carries valuable information to passers-by. The sound emitted by the following cars only adds to the already masked sounds of the urban noisescape.
"Unlike air pollution, which most major European cities are now starting to tackle, noise has been ignored for decades as the problem has worsened and the negative impacts on society have increased."
Nina Renshaw / T&E Research
One might think that noise exposure in city would have been decreasing, as the availability of electric sharing vehicles, from cars to scooters, has increased drastically in the last few years, as well as the number of individually owned electric cars has risen. In reality, larger cars with bigger engines, and generally increased traffic volume has contributed more noise pollution to the urban environment than the named benefactors could take away. A wide range of medical studies shows the immense negative impact on health, just as other studies prove that the noisy environment also has negative implications for urban communities. As accident fatality rates are mostly stagnating, and nearly all improvements can be accounted to safety legislations like helmets and safety-belts, we can assume that the noise emitted by car engines are not exactly first-class instruments in establishing safe roads. From this standpoint, the policy by EU-legislative, obliging manufacturers to implement sound devices into their cars from 2019 on, comes off as quite retrograde. From a pedestrian or cyclist perspective, the new policy is a useful and straightforward measure. From a societal and health perspective, it can be almost rated as ignorant, as it provides very limited further guidance on the design of the sound. This has led many car manufacturers to deepen their already extensive push in customer-first product development, disregarding the interest of any person not traveling inside the vehicle, for leveraging the new legislation as an advertisement-instrument.
The European Environment Agency blames 10.000 premature deaths, 43.000 hospital admissions, and 900.000 cases of hypertension a year in Europe on noise. The most pervasive source is road-traffic noise: 125 million Europeans experience levels greater than 55 decibels – thought to be harmful to health – day, evening and night.
The sound should only be emitted, when it actually necessary and serves a communicational purpose.
Almost any electric cars already provide the hardware necessary for an adaptive sound framework. Already a simple onboard system with quite simple computer-vision abilities is sufficient can drastically improve pedestrian safety and also erase most of its contribution to the noise pollution of urban areas. Still, it needs to be addressed, that beyond 30km/h, the noise level of the rolling tires surpasses the sound of the engine. This, of course, does not apply to sequences of acceleration, where the engine sounds are far louder.
In the near future, advanced sensory systems can be used to implement a thoroughly developed sound-language. Companies like Tesla, already equip all their cars with essential self-driving capabilities, which are disabled depending on local legislation. With these technologies already in place, it is time for car manufactures to take responsibility for the emitted noise and the health risks and consequences involved.
Dynamic factors should influence the sound a car emits, just as information about the area, time of the day and season can be used to improve targetting and pollution.
Besides dynamic factors, like the presence and movement of pedestrians and cyclists, already simple environmental factors like time could be used to modulate the emitted sounds. In night time higher frequencies could be used, that travel less far and are blocked-out by glass-windows, to not disturb local residents in their sleep. This also could apply to roads and areas around schools, as children are more sensitive to higher frequencies and are also one of the most vulnerable traffic participants.
From a commercial stand-point, this framework also has great potential for manufacturers, as hearably addressing the societal reality of urban traffic and car ownership could be immensely beneficial to the companies images. In the light of the series of scandals that involved criminally cheating around air pollution limitations and extensively fiddling with emission data, this could be a valuable turning point to improving the hardened opinions about the industry.
Qualitative visualization of the area of human hearing perception and common types of sound.
The area of human hearing perception consists of many areas that are sensitive to different types of sounds which can be melodic or rhythmic. The way these sounds influence stress levels largely depends on its volume, but also on a wide range of psychoacoustic factors, like loudness and roughness. The science of Psychoacoustics is very profound, while it is largely ignored by companies producing sound-emitting vehicles. Most railroad companies have started to showed interest in decreasing noise volumes from a scientific standpoint, as they are solely responsible for the noise distributed by their trains.
The psychoacoustic framework can be used to accurately place different elements of situation-aware car-human communication to increase pedestrian safety and readability of the sound, but also be used to eliminate noises that pose serious risks to local residents and human health in general.
Our framework provides a broad range of possible implementations. It can be implemented holistically, or by individual elements. It also targets the interests of car owners, pedestrians, cyclists and local residents of affected areas alike.
Contextualizing Technology
office@same.vision
+49 30 2885 2595
Cotheniusstr. 6
D-10407 Berlin