Acoustical Awareness, Orientation, and Navigation in Rooms

我们对空间的感知以及随后在空间中的定位和导航都是由视觉系统主导的，它依赖于我们眼睛视网膜上空间的高分辨率地形表征。尽管如此，我们的听觉系统还是有贡献的：当视野局限于观看方向时，空间听觉是全方位的，经常引导头部和眼睛的方向。虽然这种听觉的贡献在视力正常的人中可能相当小，但视障人士可能更多地依赖听觉线索。利用听觉线索的一个极端例子是一些盲人利用回声定位导航的能力。然而，即使不发出专门的声音（例如嘴的咔嚓声用于回声定位），人类也能够从外部声音受表面和物体影响的方式中提取周围空间的信息，在封闭的空间中产生早期反射和后来的混响。本研究计划旨在正式量化人类在空间中定位和导航的能力，具体方法包括：1)结合视听线索；2)没有视觉线索，但有正常和放大的音频线索；3)在接受回声定位训练的人类中只使用回声声学线索。我们将招募具有扬声器阵列或耳机和头戴式显示器的虚拟视听环境，以完全控制（回声）声学和视觉线索。根据这些基线量化，我们将开发声学增强现实解决方案，并评估其在虚拟环境中的有效性，旨在优化介导空间信息的声学线索。该项目将从申请者的互补专业知识中受益匪浅，特别是在室内声学模拟和信号处理、回声定位领域，以及对理解双耳听力及其在具有挑战性的现实环境中的作用的共同兴趣。心理声学和建模方面的共同专业知识将与应用的虚拟现实技术一起，允许描绘受试者使用的听觉感知线索。在分享共同技术和程序的同时，两个实验室提出的互补工作计划将侧重于虚拟声学、声学增强现实、混响和人类回声定位。该项目将提供新的见解，在多大程度上听房间可以促进视障受试者的行动，并显示哪些感知特征被受试者利用。此外，该项目将为视障人士提供康复和辅助声学技术。

Our awareness of space, and subsequent orientation and navigation in space is dominated by the visual system, relying on the high-resolution topographic representation of space on the retinae of our eyes. Nevertheless, our auditory system can contribute: While the visual field is limited to the viewing direction, spatial hearing is omnidirectional, often guiding head- and eye orientation. While this auditory contribution may be rather small in sighted persons, visually impaired humans are likely to rely much more on auditory cues. An extreme case of the use of auditory cues is reflected by some blind humans’ ability to navigate using echolocation. However, even without emitting dedicated sounds (e.g. mouth clicks for echolocation), humans are able to extract information about their surrounding space from the way external sounds are affected by surfaces and objects, generating early reflections and later reverberation in enclosed spaces.This research proposal is designed to formally quantify the ability of humans to orient in and navigate through space by means of i) combined audio-visual cues, ii) without visual cues but with normal and magnified audio cues, and iii) with only echo-acoustic cues in humans that are trained in echolocation. We will recruit virtual audio-visual environments with speaker arrays or headphones and head-mounted displays for fully controlled (echo)-acoustic and visual cues. From these baseline quantifications we will develop acoustic augmented reality solutions and evaluate their effectiveness in virtual environments aiming to optimize acoustic cues that mediate spatial information.The proposed project strongly benefits from the complementary expertise of the applicants, particularly in the area of room acoustic simulation and signal processing, and echolocation, as well as from the common interest in understanding binaural hearing and its role in challenging real-world situations. The common expertise in psychoacoustics and modelling will, together with the applied virtual reality techniques, allow for delineating auditory-perceptual cues utilized by the subjects. While sharing common techniques and procedures, the complementary work programme proposed for the two labs will focus on virtual acoustics and acoustic augmented reality and reverberation and human echolocation.The project will provide new insights on the extent to which listening to rooms may facilitate visually impaired subjects’ mobility and show which perceptual features are exploited by the subjects. Moreover, the project will provide rehabilitative and assistive acoustic technologies for people with visual impairments.