Modern life is surrounded by sounds of various kinds. Some are necessary, others are just noise. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates about 1 million healthy years of life are lost every year in the western countries of WHO European region, because of traffic-related noise, clearly placing it as one of the major problems the world faces today.
Modern life is surrounded by sounds of various kinds. Some are necessary, others are just noise. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates about 1 million healthy years of life are lost every year in the western countries of WHO European region, because of traffic-related noise, clearly placing it as one of the major problems the world faces today.
Now, a Dutch startup is aiming to bring a solution to this problem. Known as Sorama, the company aims to not just reduce the amount of noise, but also make your surrounding sounds pleasant. More importantly, when used in public surveillance situations, it can detect sources of aggression, which in turn could help authorities identify criminal issues quickly.
“We make sound visible,” said Rick Scholte from Sorama at a recent seminar. Scholte cited a case study at Philips, wherein their smartphones had trouble with a particular level of sound.
“We have a sort of sound camera technology, a bunch of microphones together which we keep in front of the product and we calculate back in 3D what’s happening at the source surface. So you can actually find where the source of certain sound is,” Scholte said. Using their technology, the origin of the sound can be seen in slow motion.
Applications of sound camera
The company has developed its technology into a product that can be used by the industry, in small and large sizes. It is offered via pay-per-use service on their cloud platform.
Scholte gave another instance where the company has used its product – near railway tracks. From the sound information, their cameras gathered they could assess which of the wheels were causing trouble. Such an application would help the train company to do predictive maintenance.
The product can play a role in smart cities too. In another example cited by Scholte, the company integrated three sound cameras in the street and from the information gathered they could identify the sound sources there. This includes sounds like those from pubs and people on the street.
They also added a function that could detect aggression and this could in turn help identify sources of problems when there are complaints from people. When installed in a city-wide network, this could help governments identify possible situations where there could be criminal issues like fights.