Stanford students think PANDA is the answer to silent EVs/hybrids
Laws and regulations to force hybrid and pure electric car makers develops vehicles that emit a noise to alert blind people to their presence are under consideration. If EVs will one day need to beep or purr for pedestrian safety, what might the ideal system sound like? Two students at Stanford think they know, and it's called PANDA.
The Pedestrian Awareness Noise-emitting Device and Application is a speaker system that was described by school media as a low noise that "wasn't a car engine and was a bit closer to a muted jet engine, with some static and white noise thrown in." Graduate students Everett Meyer and Bryan Bai developed the system during their free time and created a company, Enhanced Vehicle Acoustics, under which they developed they prototype that is currently installed on Bai's Prius. PANDA is quieter than an ICE (by ~5 dB from the front and ~10-20 from the back) and emits a sound from the front wheel wells and under the rear bumper. What that sound will be in a future production version is not yet set, as the two will be working with various blind advocacy groups in the near future to find the most effective beeping, pinging or roar.
UPDATE: typo fixed
[Source: Stanford via EVWorld]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Hans Wurst 8:15PM (6/02/2008)
Ever thought of reading your blog before you publish?
You'd probably catch stuff like "What that sound is will be in a future production version is not yet set"
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Andy 8:25PM (6/02/2008)
And here I thought someone had come up with a clever idea to use animal sounds to make it more pleasant but still useful to the vision impaired. But no - "similar to a jet engine" - huray. what progress. :(
It should be a sound that is recognizable in singular, but fades away in aggregate.... or something ...
Anyway, I'm not sure what the point is of describing sounds. They should post an audio stream and take votes.
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BlackbirdHighway 8:32PM (6/02/2008)
Beeping or pinging. So, why don't they just outlaw hybrids and electric cars and be done with it.
That would be better than killing them off by making them impossibly annoying to drive.
There has got to be a better solution than this.
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dhofmann 8:44PM (6/02/2008)
Pinging? Like sonar? That would be cool. The blind person could press a button on a keychain transmitter, and all equipped cars within range would make some kind of audible sound. That way the rest of us wouldn't have to hear the noise all the time.
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Cervus 8:47PM (6/02/2008)
When I read this article I think of the sound the original 80s KITT made in Knight Rider.
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Joe 9:07PM (6/02/2008)
How about a necklace for blind people which has a speaker in it along with a wireless receiver. Quiet cars would be equipped with forward looking antennas which broadcast a short range low power signal. When the necklace picks up the signal, it beeps, or whatever.
Having the cars always make noise is stupid and would be outrageously annoying.
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Wave54 10:25PM (6/02/2008)
From the original article:
"The noise isn't audible from inside the car, Bai said, unless you roll down a window."
Doesn't sound like that big a deal. Probably a good idea at speeds under 20 mph -- crosswalks and parking lots.
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Andrew 10:41PM (6/02/2008)
Love the picture... Standford Students ahahahahah
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james 1:52AM (6/03/2008)
I really don't think any added noise is necessary at all. Try checking out how much engine noise you really hear from a decent ICE car these days. Hardly any, especially at low speeds, like on city streets where pedestrians will tend to meet cars. What you DO hear is the clear sound of tire on pavement. That won't change with electric vehicles.
Here's a test: next time you're in a parking lot, before going inside, close you eyes and listen for cars passing near where you are leaning against your car. What do you hear? NOT engine noise, but tires rolling over asphalt. Very obviously, even very slow moving cars as you'll find in a parking lot.
And the blind tend to have more acute hearing than the sighted.
Don't need any idiotic noise machine added as I hear it.
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Andy 6:59AM (6/03/2008)
ICE's may seem quiet but that's only when there's ambient noise. In a truly quiet place, an engine is audible while an electric would be undetectable. So there would be a false sense of security. I don't think a noise generator needs to be loud... It just needs to be enough that there's something to detect amidst otherwise complete silence.
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Ordinary Radical 7:21AM (6/03/2008)
Low-tech solution:
Playing cards in the spokes.
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Ordinary Radical 7:21AM (6/03/2008)
Or how about one with customizable sounds? You could make it sound like a galloping horse, a jet, or a blown hemi! (That would be a wild sound coming out of a Prius!)
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Sean 9:29AM (6/03/2008)
Seriously, the quietness of EVs are one of their selling points. The wireless transmitter idea is ideal, and it can use one of the frequencies that will be freed up after the digital TV transition. Interference isn't an issue since all the pedestrian cares about is if any cars are present and the closest one will be the strongest. Cars' distance & direction (approaching or not) can even be extrapolated from the signal strength and the first derivative of same.
Putting artificial noise in EVs is like forcing everyone to use screen reader software when it only benefits a minority of the population.
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Ronald Jones 9:57AM (6/03/2008)
Every vehicle sold already has a noise maker that beeps.
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Tim 11:00AM (6/03/2008)
This is simply a case of liberals looking for something to whine about.
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Dustin 11:34AM (6/03/2008)
I agree with james (#9) 100%. I was just pondering this yesterday actually, when I observed a Prius slowing for a stoplight and I could hear it just fine from the sidewalk. Most of the noise was indeed the tires. The next vehicle was an old beat-up Mercury Sable, and to my surprise I found that car to be exactly as quiet as the Prius, making mostly tire noise. I just didn't see the problem.
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Peter 11:37AM (6/03/2008)
A sound that is a little bit like a jet engine with some white noise thrown in is exactly what an EV already sounds like. Electric motors produce a high pitched jet engine whine and tires and wind produce lower frequency white noise.
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John 12:09PM (6/03/2008)
You can hear the sound by going to the Stanford link at the bottom of story and then clicking on the video. The sound is absolutely terrible. It sounds like a constant loud vomit.
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Yanquetino 12:31PM (6/03/2008)
None of this makes sense to me. Has anyone, anywhere, at anytime actually conducted a bona fide study to determine if EVs or hybrids do, in fact, pose a danger to the blind?
My hypothesis for such a study is that blind people would actually hear such vehicles coming without any problem, precisely because their ears are better atuned to what's going on around them --much moreso than for those who also depend upon their eyes to perceive danger. Indeed, it wouldn't surprise me if the results showed that blind people are likewise aware of the approach of "silent" bicyclists and joggers better than sighted people.
If someone knows of such a study, please pass the reference along. Otherwise, asserting the "danger" of EVs or hybrids to blind people remains unsubstantiated and thus unworthy of all this hullabaloo.
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Kevin Nugent 6:50PM (6/03/2008)
OMG WHYYY???? WHY DONT YOU JUST KILL ELECTRIC CARS NOW. i understand that blind people are bitching whining, hollering etc, but the fact still remains that they make us less than 2 percent of the population . Not to say that they do not deserve safety and comfort as the average person but hearing that stupid pinging or what ever the sound may be over and over just so a blind person can hear is nonsense.
IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT YOU WILL COME ACROSS A BLIND PERSON LIKE EVERY 2 WEEKS or if even 1 in a month so what is the sense of creating added noise. All that needs to be done is create awareness and be more at tentative to your surroundings when driving g a vehicles like a pruis. Part of the benefit of driving a hybird is the relatively silent operation , Stop trying to pass legislation on everything !! God that pisses me off so much . Cars like the pruis get fantastic mileage and anything that will disrupt the experience will be a turn off an in so companies will have a hard time selling tehir cars if such a legislation is passed. Either that or people buy the cars and just disable the sound. which i will be one of them if crap like that is on quite cars
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