Press and Media

The German Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT has launched the "lokalRAIN" research project in collaboration with Pan Acoustics GmbH from Wolfenbüttel. The goal of the project is to develop an acoustic rain sensor and a cost-efficient sensor network for the precise real-time detection and transmission of precipitation data. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and runs from October 2024 to June 2026.

In the latest episode of the DLG Podcast Agriculture, our expert in Music Information Retrieval & Machine Listening, Jakob Abeßer, talks with Martina Clausen (DLG) about the use of AI for analyzing natural sounds.

Jan Rennies-Hochmuth has been appointed professor of Hearing-, Speech- and Neurotechnology at the Department of Medical Physics and Acoustics as part of a joint process between the University of Oldenburg and the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT.

Sina Buchholz from Fraunhofer IDMT in Oldenburg received the Student Conference Award from the National Hearing Conservation Association (NHCA). The NHCA is an international association of hearing conservationists from fields such as audiology, medicine, occupational health, acoustics, and research.

The InsightPersona research tool takes media literacy in political education to the next level. The AI-based analysis software identifies faces and voices in large archives in seconds. With the help of a chatbot and a semantic search, the analyzed archive can be used for research purposes. In the intuitively designed dashboard, the results can be processed to answer further questions. Journalists, teachers, publishers, software providers and those working in political education can find out more about the Fraunhofer IDMTproject at the didacta fair in Stuttgart from 11 to 15 February 2025.

A well-functioning voice is an essential prerequisite for teachers in their daily work. With VoiceTracker, the Fraunhofer IDMT is working on a solution that offers teachers preventive support for the health of their voice. The software analyzes voice quality in real time and detects potential voice problems at an early stage. Interested teachers and companies involved in preventive health care can find out more about VoiceTracker at the didacta education trade fair in Stuttgart from February 11 to 15, 2025.

Congratulations to our colleague Kay Fuhrmeister for winning the Best Poster Award, which he received together with his colleagues Hao Cui, Artem Yaroshchuk, and Thomas Köllmer last week at the IEEE 5th International Symposium on the Internet of Sounds (IEEE IS² 2024) in Erlangen.

Fraunhofer IDMT will showcase its Content Verification Toolbox — a sophisticated suite of tools designed to support and enhance media content verification at IBC 2024. These tools provide robust, explainable, AI-driven solutions for media professionals investigating both audio and audio-visual content.

At the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam, the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT will be presenting a solution that uses AI to identify faces and voices in large media collections. The solution "InsightPersona" provides evaluations of the presence of people, groups of people, and conversation content in a matter of seconds. In combination with information on speech intelligibility or excitement in the voice, it also offers new perspectives for searches in video archives and databases.

Zander Labs has selected the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Oldenburg as a strategic partner for the project “Neuroadaptivity for Autonomous Systems” (NAFAS) to develop state-of-the-art, unobtrusive hardware for next-generation mobile EEG devices.