Hyundai Unveils “Sound Camera” to Find Noise Sources

A new diagnostic camera that quickly locates the source of buzzing, squeaks and rattles has been developed by Hyundai Motor Co. and South Korea's SM Instruments Inc., IEEE Spectrumreports.

The handheld device creates a live, sound-based "heat map" over a video image in real time. An operator can adjust the breadth of the frequency band being analyzed to fine-tune the process.

Marketed by SM Instruments as the SeeSV, the award-winning device consists of a high-resolution optical video camera affixed to the middle of a pentagonal plate and surrounded by a compact spiral phased array of dozens of tiny MEMS (micro-electrical-mechanical system) microphones.

The camera uses a single-board, reconfigurable input-output controller to perform a beamforming function that compares signals from all the microphones. The unit localizes the source of vibration and superimposes the result as a dynamic color-coded map over the video image at 25 frames per second.

Developers Kang-Duck Ih from Hyundai and Youngkey Kim from SM Instruments point out that product developers can use the SeeSV to find and eliminate unwanted noise in any structure.