Vehicle Sound Processing System for Hazard Awareness
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Solution Overview
Problem
In vehicles equipped with driver assistance and autonomous driving systems, noise cancellation creates a silent cabin, isolating passengers from external events, making it difficult to draw attention to important external objects or hazards.
Innovation Solution
A vehicle sound processing system using sensors to detect external objects and generate a three-dimensional sound field, allowing the placement of sound events at virtual locations and employing a zoom function to adjust the perceived distance of these events, thereby alerting occupants to potential hazards.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If noise cancellation systems are used to create a silent cabin, then passenger comfort is improved, but the ability to perceive external events and hazards deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces an intermediary sound processing system that captures external sounds through sensors, processes them to determine object locations, and reproduces them through speakers positioned to create a three-dimensional sound field. This intermediary system bridges the gap between the noise-cancelled cabin environment and the need to perceive external events, allowing passengers to hear processed external sounds without compromising the overall noise cancellation benefit.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of directly canceling all external sounds which would eliminate hazard perception, the system inverts the approach by selectively preserving and enhancing specific external sounds (those from detected objects or events of interest) while maintaining noise cancellation for general ambient noise. This inversion allows the system to achieve both noise reduction and hazard awareness simultaneously.
2Measurement precision
If the distance to external objects is accurately represented in the sound field, then spatial accuracy is improved, but the ability to draw immediate attention to hazards deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically adjusts the virtual location of sound events based on their importance. For hazardous objects, the system can move the sound event closer to the listener's perceived position, creating a sense of urgency and drawing immediate attention. For non-critical objects, the sound event maintains its accurate spatial representation. This dynamic adjustment allows the system to maintain spatial accuracy while enabling rapid hazard response when needed.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the distance parameter of sound events in the three-dimensional sound field based on their significance. By adjusting this parameter, hazardous objects can be presented as closer than they physically are, creating an auditory alert effect that draws immediate attention without sacrificing the overall spatial accuracy of the sound field representation.
Data Source
AI summary
A vehicle sound processing system including an array of sensors, memory, and a processing unit. The array of sensors is configured to detect signals of an object located outside the vehicle. The memory is configured to store control instructions. The processing unit is connected to the array of sensors and configured to read the control instructions from the memory and to perform, based on the control instructions, the following steps: determining the location of the object outside the vehicle is based on the detected signals, generating a three-dimensional sound field inside the vehicle and a sound event representing the detected object is placed in the three-dimensional sound field at a virtual location in the three-dimensional sound field such that when the three-dimensional sound field with the sound event is output to a vehicle occupant, the vehicle occupant locates the sound event at the determined location of the object. Furthermore, a zoom function is provided with which a distance of the virtual location of the sound event relative to the vehicle occupant is decreased or increased.