Communications of the ACM
App Differentiates a Baby's Crying Sounds
Clearly this baby is unhappy, but why? A new app can help interpret four different crying sounds made by babies.
Credit: Getty Images
Researchers at National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) have developed the Infant Cries Translator, an app that can differentiate between four separate crying sounds made by babies.
The researchers spent two years collecting about 200,000 crying sounds from approximately 100 newborn babies, and uploaded them to an online database. An analysis of the frequency of the individual screams helped the researchers distinguish subtle differences in acoustics.
The app displays an analysis of a baby's cries on the user's phone within 15 seconds, with an accuracy of 92 percent for infants under two weeks old, helping inform parents when their child is hungry, sleepy, in pain, or has a wet diaper. The analysis becomes less accurate as the baby gets older.
The app constantly updates its database to a cloud drive, and its machine-learning algorithm enables parents to set up a personal setting for their infant, based on the parents' feedback.
"Once the baby cries, we only need to press the recording button for 10 seconds, and the sound will be uploaded to the cloud drive," says NTUH researcher Chang Chuan-yu.
From Reuters
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