The Luistervinq Flies Out!

The final session of project Luistervinq took place through a presentation at our office with a demonstration nearby and a closing lunch. In a beautiful autumn sunshine, Team Datacadabra showed those present how the Luistervinq works and what it can monitor.

It all started at the beginning of 2021: Sportinnovator set a challenge for monitoring sports and physical activity in outdoor public spaces to gain insight into the type of use and the number of people. This monitoring should provide more insight into possible obstacles and show potential opportunities for improvement. Indeed, outdoor spaces are increasingly popular nowadays, but there is hardly any information about their use. The increase leads to a greater need for insight among policymakers, which in turn is valuable for various policy areas, including the vitality of residents, the mode and degree of recreation in public spaces, and tourism appeal.

That's when the idea of audio data came to Datacadabra, in the form of the Luistervinq: a privacy-proof solution that blends into its environment, yet maps the use of public spaces. Because of our knowledge and experience with Artificial Intelligence, the choice was quickly made: the Luistervinq listens to its surroundings, and by mimicking the design of a birdhouse, it will not disturb the environment. For audio data knowledge, we could rely on the relevant department of the University of Twente. We submitted our idea and in January we learned that we had won the challenge!

Then we started the development of the Luistervinq: which components are applicable, what should the Luistervinq be able to detect, which substrates are available, what information is needed from potential customers, etc. We could not answer all these questions ourselves, so during the project we made grateful use of a user group. This group consisted of various parties from the region who had a great deal of domain knowledge and were eager to cooperate. During the process of the Luistervinq we held several meetings with MarketingOost, Municipality of Losser, Recreational Area Het Hulsbeek and Routenetwerken Twente to present progress, ask questions and answer questions. The user group was very valuable as they provided us with domain knowledge and contributed to the proposition formation.

In recent months, Team Datacadabra, with support from the University of Twente, has managed to develop the Luistervinq into what it is today: an energy-efficient and privacy-proof solution that provides insight into the use of public spaces by listening to its surroundings. It can display the classification of use (walking, running, cycling, mountain biking), which direction of movement the activity is in (left>right or right>left) and give an indication of group size. The two microphones record the audio and filter it for relevance, which then allows classification, direction of movement and group size to be associated with it. The relevant data is then sent to the cloud environment allowing the results to be displayed in a dashboard.

After just under a year, project Luistervinq has been completed: the hardware and software components have been incorporated into a waterproof housing that has the appearance of a birdhouse. In addition, the Luistervinq provides valuable insights for several parties: by monitoring usage, visitor numbers can be better regulated and maintenance can be better predicted. This provides benefits for site managers, municipalities, nature organizations and consulting firms, among others.

The Luistervinq is ready for use! It can be used for counts, nuisance signaling, usage intensity or other monitoring based on sound. The next step for the Luistervinq will be to conduct a pilot, discussing what the specific requirements are and testing how this works in practice for a longer period of time.

Are you interested in how the Luistervinq works or do you think the Luistervinq could mean something for your work or company? Then contact us and we will talk to you about the possibilities!