BACKGROUND & RESEARCH

In this second phase of Industrial Sound Design, we were encouraged to freely experiment with relating sounds to actions. It was a team work with John and Erik, I mainly worked on prototyping.

As a starting point we were asked to select an automobile brand and discuss what is characteristic of this brand. We would imagine that the company we had chosen has decided to produce an electric car, which basically has a silent motor. That’s the reason why we need create a sound that the car can emit so that pedestrians and bicyclists can hear it approaching.

Volkswagen old Beetle was our choice. We all agreed that Volkswagen vehicle was popular using for everyday life and Beetle was a fashion classical icon. Here is the theme board for our imagine electric beetle.

PROTOTYPING

Then we began to search, record and edit sound by ourselves. For presentation, we made a prototyping which I am responsible for to show the sound relating to the actions.

I used a touch sensor, a distance sensor and a magnetic sensor which was used to count the rolling speed of the wheel to input the signal to arduino. In order to to replace the physical wired Serial communication (USB cable) with a wireless one, i used Xbee which provides wireless end-point connectivity to devices.

And I made a video dairy recorded the process of  this exercise from the begnning.

RESULT

Here is a demonstration to show how it present the sound which we designed for the vehicle.