With the transition to autonomous driving, traveling becomes a lot more relaxed, but motion sickness is also lurking. Many manufacturers are working on techniques to combat this and Volvo has set up a team of sound designers.
The road to fully autonomous driving has many bumps, obstacles and challenges. Perhaps not the biggest, but secretly an important one, is gaining the confidence of the occupants. Not only fans of Stanley Kubrick’s film classic ‘2001: a Space Odyssey’ will find it difficult to hand over their lives to an almighty computer, it is expected. At Volvo, a special team is debating the possibilities of gaining trust with sounds. That may sound a bit vague, but after a conversation with the project manager of Volvo’s Team Active Sound Experience, interactive sound designer Fredrik Hagman and his colleague, sound designer Pontus Larsson, it suddenly becomes a lot more realistic.
Ignorance
People who are prone to motion sickness in particular will benefit greatly from Volvo’s noise project, Larsson explains: “Motion sickness goes hand in hand with autonomous driving. A driver is never bothered by it, because he always pays attention to the road and checks the movements himself. But in self-driving cars, everyone is a passenger and that’s where people want to do other things, such as reading. That induces motion sickness. It’s about making passengers understand what’s going to happen in the next few seconds. Previous experiments have already taught us that you can significantly reduce motion sickness in this way. Motion sickness stems not only from a conflict between what you see and what you feel, but also from ignorance of what is about to happen. Knowing that can help you prepare even if you don’t see the road ahead of the car.
This phenomenon has already been demonstrated in laboratory settings, but we tried it on a test track in practice, putting passengers in conditions that amplify motion sickness, such as reading on a tablet. The motion sickness-reducing effect was found to work. Apart from that, you also create a kind of transparency between the autonomous car and its occupants, so that the passengers know what the car is seeing and intends to do and thus gain more confidence in the car. ” At the same time, the sound experience must remain pleasant, Larsson emphasizes: “The sounds must of course be audible, but they must not become intrusive or otherwise annoying and, on the contrary, provide a reassuring feeling. You also have to be able to listen to them for a longer period of time and experience them as helpful. ”
Volvo measurement setup
Tweaking
Not only does Volvo take the phenomenon of noises in cars seriously, BMW has even hired Hollywood film composer Hans Zimmer to create sounds for its cars. How far can you go in that? Hagman: “That is also very important to us. That is why we involved the gaming industry to learn how it deals with sounds and thus how to create a pleasant environment while at the same time serving a practical purpose. ”
From a practical point of view, what are we to imagine with such sounds? For example, how does Volvo intend to announce a sharp turn? Larsson: “It’s not just about how it sounds, but also when it sounds. In a modern car you hear what happens when it happens. We want to take advantage of the fact that self-driving cars usually know in advance what is going to happen. So we also play the sounds just before the actual event, about one or two seconds earlier. For example, acceleration and deceleration, typical movements that lead to motion sickness, naturally hear pitch up and pitch down sounds, which feels familiar. For curves, we take advantage of the ability to pan the sound up and down between left and right. In addition, we use filters (devices or plug-ins with which a certain part of the sound spectrum is blocked, ed.), With which we can make the sound more or less prominent at the same time as shifting from one side of the car to the other. , and that a little earlier, so that you know that there is a bend coming. With those parameters we tweak until we have the right sweet spot to make it as pleasant and intuitive as possible.
The amount of acceleration or deceleration and the sharpness of the turn all affect the shape of the sounds. In this way we create sounds that feel natural with the movements of the car. ” Not everyone is equally susceptible to motion sickness, Hagman knows: “We make different sounds for that. People who are not bothered by it at all may benefit more from silence, so that they can work undisturbed. ”
Voice actress
The sounds are all ‘synthesized’, says Hagman, but: “The real car sounds are the basis of those sounds. Nevertheless, we make use of the possibilities that synthesizers offer us to further develop the sounds. The creative space is great. ” Larsson: “We really try everything, which means we also stray far from conventional car sounds. Also sounds based on the human voice. No speech, but sounds. We even brought a voice actress into the studio to record some sounds. ”