Am­bi­ent In­tel­li­gence > Re­se­arch

Re­se­arch

So­ni­fi­ca­ti­on

So­ni­fi­ca­ti­on is the use of sound – main­ly non-​speech audio si­gnals – for re­p­re­sen­ting or dis­play­ing data. Si­mi­lar to sci­en­ti­fic vi­sua­liza­ti­on, so­ni­fi­ca­ti­on aims at en­ab­ling human lis­te­ners to make use of their highly-​developed per­cep­tu­al skills for ma­king sense of the data. In our vi­sual­ly do­mi­na­ted cul­tu­res, par­ti­cu­lar­ly in the area of com­pu­ter sci­ence, we find that sound is ne­glec­ted mo­da­li­ty, de­spi­te the high po­ten­ti­al: sound di­rects our at­ten­ti­on, sound ac­com­pa­nies every in­ter­ac­tion and en­ri­ches it with qua­li­ta­ti­ve in­for­ma­ti­on, sound is part­ly com­ple­men­ta­ry to vi­su­al in­for­ma­ti­on, sound is pro­ces­sed 24/7, even if we do not look, sound is pro­ces­sed wit­hout ef­fort, we con­stant­ly apply au­di­to­ry lear­ning, en­ab­ling us to use sound for tasks from ex­plo­ra­to­ry ana­ly­sis, de­tec­tion, mo­ni­to­ring, dia­gno­sis and com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on.

Re­se­arch on so­ni­fi­ca­ti­on in the Am­bi­ent in­tel­li­gence group ran­ges from the de­ve­lo­p­ment of novel tech­ni­ques to so­ni­fy com­plex data, e.g. for au­di­to­ry data mi­ning, th­rough ap­p­li­ca­ti­ons of so­ni­fi­ca­ti­on in di­ver­se ap­p­li­ca­ti­on areas, such as sports, me­di­cal dia­gno­sis or ma­nu­al in­ter­ac­tion.

• EEG So­ni­fi­ca­ti­on for en­han­ced ana­ly­sis and dia­gno­sis of epi­le­psy
• Model-​based So­ni­fi­ca­ti­on: a tech­ni­que to en­able ex­plo­ra­to­ry in­ter­ac­ti­ve so­ni­fi­ca­ti­on using physics-​inspired dy­na­mic mo­dels in high-​dimensional data spaces
• Blen­ded So­ni­fi­ca­ti­on: a de­sign frame­work to coup­le in­for­ma­ti­ve so­ni­fi­ca­ti­ons to ever­y­day phy­si­cal in­ter­ac­tions with ob­jects.
• So­ni­fi­ca­ti­on for Pro­cess Mo­ni­to­ring: sup­por­ting users in mo­ni­to­ring pro­ces­ses as a se­con­da­ry task
• Sonic Dril­ling Ma­chi­ne: using non-​speech sound alike a car's par­king aid to sup­port users 
in ad­jus­ting the ma­chi­ne
• So­ni­fied Ae­ro­bics turns sports mo­vements into sound pat­terns al­lo­wing blind users to par­ti­ci­pa­te to ae­ro­bics clas­ses
• Swim­ming So­ni­fi­ca­ti­on: an un­der­wa­ter sen­sing and so­ni­fi­ca­ti­on sys­tem to en­able 
swim­mers to per­cei­ve hy­dro­dy­na­mic pres­su­re while swim­ming - as in­ter­face bet­ween 
coach and swim­mer.
• Tweet­scapes: ‘Ars Elec­tro­ni­ca Award of Dis­tinc­tion’ win­ning so­ni­fi­ca­ti­on sys­tem that so­ni­fies the Ger­man Twit­ter traf­fic.
• Wet­ter­vor­hör­sa­ge: Wea­ther Fo­re­cast So­ni­fi­ca­ti­on for broad­cast sta­ti­ons