Augmented Reality Audio

The concept of augmented reality audio (ARA) characterizes techniques where physically real sound and voice environment is extended with various virtual environments and communication scenarios. In this project, the focus is in developing new techniques, applications, and interfaces for future personal appliances which are wearable and support full-duplex high-quality audio and voice transmission.

ARA-related publications

Publication Short description N/A "Modeling the attenuation of a loosely-fit insert headphone for augmented reality audio", M. Tikander In Proceedings of the 30th AES Conference, Saariselkä, Finland, 15-17 March 2007. The paper studies how a traditional (walkman-type) earphone attenuates surrounding sounds. An electric equivalent circuit is introduced to model sound leaking through the headphone and around the headphone into the ear canal. This model can be used when designing acoustically transparent ARA-headphones. poster "Sound quality of an augmented reality audio headset", M. Tikander In Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Digital Audio Effects, DAFx'05, Madrid, Spain, 20-22 September 2005. An introduction to aspects having effect on ARA-headset sound quality. Article also shows the results of a listening test that was conducted to see how well non-individualized equalization works to improve the sound quality of a headset. N/A "Augmented reality audio for mobile and wearable appliances", A. Härmä, J. Jakka, M. Tikander, M. Karjalainen, T. Lokki, J. Hiipakka, and G. Lorho, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society (JAES), vol. 52, no. 6, pp. 618-639, June 2004. An overview of Augmented Reality Audio -related technologies. "Acoustic positioning and head tracking based on binaural signals", M. Tikander, A. Härmä, and M. Karjalainen 116th AES Convention, preprint 264, Berlin, Germany, 8 - 11 May 2004. Summarizes different binaural positioning scenarios, and also different techniques to estimate the user's position and orientation. Different kinds of anchor signals and signal processing is also studied. N/A "Application scenarios of wearable and mobile augmented reality audio," T. Lokki, H. Nironen, S. Vesa, L. Savioja, A. Härmä., and M. Karjalainen, In the AES 116th International Convention, Berlin, Germany, May 8-11, 2004, preprint nr. 6026. An overview of different ARA-related applications. "Head-tracking and subject positioning using binaural headset microphones and common modulation anchor sources", M. Karjalainen, M. Tikander, and A. Härmä, in Proceedings of the ICASSP'2004, Montreal, Canada, 17-21 May, 2004. The head-tracking and positioning introduces in the previous paper is further improved. The known signals that are played from the anchors, and are use for positioning, are modulated up to higher frequency bands. This way multiple anchors can be used and detected simultaniously. Using higher frequencies (>15 Hz) has some other benefits as well. "Binaural positioning system for wearable augmented reality audio", M. Tikander, A. Härmä, M. Karjalainen, in Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics (WASPAA'03), New Paltz, New York, USA, October 2003. A binaural positioning method is introduced where there are some known sound sources (anchors) in the environment. By cross-correlating the binaural microphone signals with the known anchors the distance to each anchor can be estimated. "Techniques and applications of wearable augmented reality audio", A. Härmä, J. Jakka, M. Tikander, M. Karjalainen, T. Lokki, H. Nironen, and S. Vesa, the 114th Convention of Audio Eng. Soc., Amsterdam, Netherlands, March 22-25, 2003. An introduction to wearable augmented reality audio (WARA) technology. Various technical and usability aspects are discussed and many kinds of application scenarios are tested.