Automotive Granular Synthesizer (AGS): Design and Evaluation of a Sound Processing Algorithm for Electric Vehicles

Electric Vehicles sales are increasing all over the world, thus safety related problems are emerging. Electric Vehicles and Quiet Vehicles in general represent a danger due to their low-noise emission, especially for blind or unaware pedestrians. The necessity of studying car-pedestrian interaction, defining safety parameters and developing EV-specific sounds is emerging. In the first place this thesis, born from the partnership between Centro di Centro di Sonologia Computazionale (CSC) and FIAMM, aims to explore new horizons in quiet vehicles sound design by developing the Automotive Granular Synthesizer (AGS). The AGS is an innovative tool capable of exploring the endless resources of granular synthesis to produce electric vehicle sounds. The second goal is to provide a full environment to validate and test Electric Vehicle Sounds. Finally, by performing an experiment we will highlight the correlations between Electric Vehicle Sounds spectrum, background noise and weather conditions.