HEAR LIFE: HEAR LIFE

VML Taiwan uses AI to make the rescue of every life without hindrance.


Air pollution. Noise pollution. And hot weather. In Taiwan, it’s little wonder every driver keeps their windows shut. At the same time, as the trend of vehicle industry, quieter cabin, better stereo system will be adopted in every car, a serious problem arises…

The driver was listening to music in a well-soundproofed and couldn't hear the ambulance siren. In emergency situations, a car failed to yield for an ambulance immediately, for every second of delay, can mean the difference between life and death.

According to the news report, more than 400 blocking events happened in single year in Taiwan. Therefore, in Taiwan, the news reported all the times: someone died on the way to the hospital after a car failed to yield for an ambulance. It’s a very serious problem in Taiwan society.

By the law in Taiwan, traffic fine will go to the driver who blocked ambulance on the way, and the driver license will be revoked. Hence, nobody blocks ambulance on purpose. The drivers did so just because they could not get noticed the siren in quiet cabin.

Knowing we can’t change cars or driving habits. How could we quickly alert drivers to approaching ambulances?


Introducing: ‘Hear Life’.
The world’s first AI ambulance detection system.

We discovered that ambulance sirens have unique frequencies and characteristics. Through AI technology, we are able to identify the sound of an approaching ambulance.

But in real driving environments—with endless sound interference from vehicles, ambient noise, voices, and wind—it’s anything but easy to detect sound accurately. To overcome this technical obstacle and improve accuracy, the AI detection system had to first learn and interpret a huge collection of sound samples.

For that, we turned to YouTube. The ‘Hear Life’ AI system was fed videos with ambulance sounds mixed with environmental noises, converting 3,600 films into a library of sound data. Through data analysis, the AI system learned to identify and separate the sound characteristics of ambulances from ambient noise.

In real driving environments, ‘Hear Life’ can detect ambulance sirens with 99.9% accuracy. When an ambulance is detected from behind, Hear Life immediately reduces car stereo volume, and displays a visual alert.

Innovation of ‘Hear Life’ includes 2 parts:
◆Detecting device is simplified significantly:
Transmission and receiving devices were required in classic technologies for object approaching detection. The advantage of ‘Hear Life’ is: with simple detecting device installed in vehicles, and no ambulance should be modified, the siren could be recognized. All the vehicles can add this Innovation system so easily when go back to the manufactory to have repaired and serviced.

◆High accuracy:
3600 samples with ambulance and environment sounds were converted as sound pattern data for machine learning system, ‘Hear Life’ can detect ambulance sirens with 99.9% accuracy.


The path to market is clear. ‘Hear Life’ will be mass-produced in Taiwan, with plans to cooperate with 6 major car brands to add this innovative system to vehicles when the car goes back to the manufactory to have repaired and serviced.

In September 2024, proposing the idea to the Taiwan Ministry of Communications. Making the innovative device as the standard equipment of every vehicle with legislation.

‘Hear Life’ design improvements：Cooperate with car manufacturers to integrate into the bundled HUD (Head-Up Display) system of the vehicle in the future. ‘Hear Life’ will be more beautiful and more practical.