The GTM organizes the Workshop "What is Sound and How Does It Affect us?" at the Xirinacs School

Last month, 50 children from 5 to 6 years old from the Xirinacs School in Barcelona ​​have participated in in the Workshop: "What is Sound and How Does It Affect us?", organized by the Research Group in Media Technologies (GTM). Dr. Leticia Duboc and our students Kristin Anette and Federica Ferrazzano, carried out the activity to bring awareness of the negative effects that can the urban noise can have on our health.

Our little scientists discussed the following questions: What is sound?  How does it propagate? How can we measure it? What effects can the urban noise have on our health? What is SmartSound?  The latter is a technology developed by the GTM that uses signal process algorithms and artificial intelligence to identify the source of noises automatically. It has many applications; among them, we can use it to create dynamic noise maps of cities, to identify stress and pain in animals, to support vulnerable people living alone, and to identify species of birds at risk of extinction.

To consolidate their knowledge, the children measured the sound of instruments with sound level meters, tagged noise events to train the SmartSound algorithm (as our scientists do), drew neurons with their voice using software that extracts features of sounds and transforms them into drawings, developed by Dr. Victor Saenger. Look how nice one of their drawings!

The workshop is part of the SmartSense project (Sustainable and Scalable Smart Cities Mobility Services