A driver’s awareness while on the road is a critical factor in his or her ability to make decisions to avoid hazards, plan routes and maintain safe travel. Situational awareness is gleaned not only from visual observation of the environment, but also the audible cues the environment provides - police sirens, honking cars, and crosswalk beeps, for instance, alert the driver to events around them.

In our ongoing project on "investigating the influence of audible cues on driver situational awareness", we implemented a custom audio engine that synthesizes in real time the soundscape of our driving simulator and renders it in 3D.

Resources

Acknowledgments

We thank Renault Innovation Silicon Valley for funding this project as well moForte Inc. for allowing us to use their car engine physical model algorithm.