L'observatoire Data & Créativité by iligo

The Quiet Taxi

Hyundai Motor Group is a South Korean multinational automotive matufacturer headquartered in Seoul.

Deaf people drive too, but is it really dangerous for hearing-impaired people to drive? as a matter of fact, they are more careful and actually have extremely low accident rates.
Yet problems still persist : hearing-impaired drivers are dependent mainly on their sight and touch senses. For them, direction and different sounds may be misinterpreted.
Hyundai decided to create a driving assist technology for the deaf driver. They invited Daeho Lee, Seoul’s first deaf taxi driver, to experience and present this technology.

The so-called ‘Quiet Taxi’ was introduced on January 2019, and is based on Audio-Tactile Conversion (ACT) and Audio-Visual Conversion (AVC) technology.
The car is equipped with a Heads-up Display (HUD) which sends out vibrations and illuminates the steering wheel in different stages. So it can converts all sound information inside and outside the vehicle into visual and tactile information.
This means that drivers will be able to distinguish car horns and the direction the vehicle is approaching from, through vibrations and LEDs on the steering wheel.

The technology utilizes artificial intelligence to analyze the external sound patterns and employs two separate driving assist systems that work together simultaneously .
The AVC allows communication with the external environment through visual portrayals of sound patterns, such as warning sounds of emergency vehicles, as pictograms on the head-up display (LEDs). The ATC transfers the sound data into vibrations through the steering wheel, notifying the driver of information about external environments such as distance from obstacles.

The “Quiet Taxi” is currently on the road of Seoul : it began with the one driver Daeho Lee, and has now grown into 12. Hyundai Motor Group plans to commercialize this driving assist technology for all people as well as taxis.