I-Corps: Automated Audio Monitoring

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact / commercial potential of this I-Corps project lies in enabling practical, long-term monitoring of environments, using sound, such as in livestock production, industrial settings, elder care, and surveillance/military applications. While consumer voice-activated digital assistants have driven transformation in consumer electronics, this work has potential to drive a parallel transformation for non-voice auditory data by significantly reducing the human effort and computational resources required to analyze new environments. In agriculture, this type of acoustic monitoring could result in a better understanding of animal well-being, more consistent and humane treatment of animals, and better overall outcomes. For industrial and surveillance applications, it could facilitate prevention of and rapid response to problems or threats. This I-Corps project is based on technology that learns what normal conditions sound like for an environment, then highlights when potentially abnormal events or conditions occur. If desired, these abnormal conditions can be tagged to enable the system to distinguish between different known conditions. This technology has been developed and tested extensively over the past six years within the context of monitoring poultry production facilities. In many environments ranging from a few birds to tens of thousands of birds, it has proven effective in highlighting anomalous conditions such as the presence of disease, excessive heat, human intrusions, lighting changes, and abnormal equipment noise. The technology uses proprietary sparse coding based algorithms that are computationally efficient enough to run on edge hardware. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.