Autonomous vehicles have eyes—cameras, lidar, radar. But ears? That’s what researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology’s Oldenburg Branch for Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology in Germany are building with the Hearing Car. The idea is to outfit vehicles with external microphones and AI to detect, localize, and classify environmental sounds, with the goal of helping cars react to hazards they can’t see. For now, that means approaching emergency vehicles—and eve...
