Audition Ability to Enhance Reliability of Autonomous Vehicles: Allowing Cars to Hear

Abstract

The reliability of autonomous vehicles can be enhanced by providing the vehicle with more information about the surrounding environment. Autonomous vehicles typically use LiDAR, Radar, and computer vision to substitute for the driver’s vision. By adding auditory perception, an autonomous vehicle will improve its reliability and enable the vehicle to react better to the environment.This paper proposes a novel approach to enhance the reliability of autonomous vehicles. By adding auditory perception, the vehicle will be able to hear and process audio. To illustrate the advantage of auditory capability, we conducted an experiment to collect and process audio signals obtained from a vehicle driving on the road. We showed how an audio signal can be processed to obtain extra information that can alert the vehicle to potential dangers.