AN INVESTIGATION OF SOUND SOURCES IN SMART HOUSES FOR IMPROVED MACHINE-TO-HUMAN COMMUNICATION

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the ever-evolving indoor soundscapes of smart houses by classification of the sounds emitted from smart devices. Nowadays, communication is no longer limited to person-to-person. Smart devices frequently communicate with users by verbal or tonal notifications. Therefore, acoustic characteristics of smart houses, especially reverberation time and background noise levels, have increased importance in achieving improved and lossless signal transfer and speech intelligibility. It is hypothesized that most houses are unsuitable for effective tonal and verbal communication with smart devices regarding acoustical conditions. Within the scope of the study, the devices found in the smart technology market were investigated. The sounds emitted from the identified devices were then classified according to their communicative nature (verbal/tonal), designability, customizability, and cause (i.e., intentional or consequential). The acoustic requirements for effective communication with the individual smart devices were analyzed in addition to the resulting holistic indoor soundscape of the smart houses The results of the study will help architects, interior architects, and other environmental designers to improve the quality of communication while guiding future research to understand indoor soundscapes of smart houses. © 2023 First author et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.