Subway Restroom Accidents and Crime: Once a Threat, Now Managed by 'Sound AI'

Subway restroom incidents and crime detection now feature the innovative power of "Sound AI."

Deeply’s Solution for Real-Time Emergency Detection
Leading Companies including Kyungdong Navien, Adopt Sound AI

AI technology that detects and analyzes sounds is seeing significant growth. Beyond processing text and visual data, artificial intelligence is now expanding into sound-based solutions.

According to industry sources on the 20th, the sound analysis AI startup Deeply has installed ten units of its emergency detection solution, “ListenAI,” in the restrooms at Incheon National University Station. The solution detects sounds in real-time and triggers an alert when situations such as an elderly person falling or a crime occurring are detected. It provides information on the time, location, and type of incident to the station office, enabling swift action. Suji Lee, CEO of Deeply, explained, “The technology accurately distinguishes key sounds even in loud environments.”

Sound analysis AI has unique advantages, detecting unusual ituations while being less resource-intensive than video analysis AI. It can be easily adopted by organizations without high-performance servers. It can be easily adopted by organizations without high-performance servers. While previous AI applications involved analyzing human speech to provide translations, sound analysis AI has now expanded into the business-to-business (B2B) sector. It can be used to prevent industrial accidents by detecting abnormal machine sounds or learning the types of sounds that occur during an accident to prompt rapid response. 

There are also applications in road safety, where AI can analyze road conditions and texture using sound waves to prevent accidents. Mobawheel’s platform utilizes AI to examine the physical properties of road surfaces. Sound analysis AI is also used for quality inspections of products. Roass detects abnormal sounds during the inspection of factory-manufactured products. In the medical field, Weisen's WaymedCough can assess a user's respiratory health with just three to five coughs. Kyungdong Navien has launched a sleep mat that detects a user's breathing sounds and adjusts the sleep temperature using technology from the sleep-tech startup Asleep.

There is even AI technology capable of identifying the gender, breed, and current state of a dog by analyzing barking sounds. This technology is the result of training a specialized AI for voice analysis using collected sounds of barking, growling, and whimpering from 74 dogs.

— Euni Ko, koko@hankyung.com

https://www.hankyung.com/article/2024092077351