The Aurora project was originally set up to establish a world wide standard for the feature extraction software which forms the core of the front-end of a DSR (Distributed Speech Recognition) system. ETSI formally adopted this activity as work items 007 and 008.

The two work items within ETSI are:
- ETSI DES/STQ WI007: Distributed Speech Recognition - Front-End Feature Extraction Algorithm & Compression Algorithm
- ETSI DES/STQ WI008: Distributed Speech Recognition - Advanced Feature Extraction Algorithm.

This database is a subset of the SpeechDat-Car database in German language which has been collected as part of the European Union funded SpeechDat-Car project. It contains isolated and connected German digits spoken in the following noise and driving conditions inside a car:

1. High speed good road
2. Low speed rough road
3. Stopped with motor running
4. Town traffic