SMART Kita

The "Smart Kita (Smart Daycare Center)" project is designed to make work in the field of daycare teaching more attractive for older people and to motivate them to extend their working life or to re-enter this profession once more. The research goal is to minimize the physical, cognitive and psychological stress factors at the workplace such as noise, lacking regeneration phases, work organization and ergonomic problems. New information and communication technologies are being developed and used in order to automate work processes and documentation tasks and to increase safety. Methods for evaluation and improvement of acoustic conditions are being investigated in the areas of noise exposure and interference noise. Evaluation in daycare centers during the course of the project is intended to increase the acceptance of technology-assisted solutions among daycare teachers.

The Branch Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology of Fraunhofer IDMT is responsible in this project for investigating and realizing new interpretation methods and psychoacoustic models for evaluation of noise exposure. An intelligent noise management system allows the current acoustic situation to be analyzed and safety-critical situations (crying, cries of fear) to be detected at an early stage. The time characteristic of the noise analysis is recorded in the form of a noise diary so that the work processes and break times can be optimally adapted to the noise conditions.