Bi-modal Task Faciliation in a Virtual Traffic Scenario through Spatialized Sound Rendering

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• Publication Type: Journal Paper (without talk)
• ISSN: 1544-3558
• Month: November
• Note: Article No. 24
• Weblink: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2043606&CFID=76205769&CFTOKEN=78897554
• Keywords: audio-visual perception, virtual environments, pedestrian safety, bimodal task faciliation, head related transfer functions

In this paper we investigate the effect of the quality of sound rendering on task performance in a task which is inherently vision dominated. The task is a virtual traffic gap crossing scenario with two elements: first, to discriminate crossable and uncrossable gaps in oncoming traffic, and second, to find the right timing to start crossing the street without an accident.

A study was carried out with 48 participants in an immersive Virtual Environment setup with a large screen and headphones. Participants were grouped into three different conditions. In the first condition, spatialized audio rendering with head-related transfer function (HRTF) filtering was used. The second group was tested with conventional stereo rendering, and the remaining group ran the experiment in a mute condition.

Our results give a clear evidence that spatialized audio improves task performance compared to the unimodal mute condition. Since all task-relevant information was in the participants' field-of-view, we conclude that an enhancement of task performance results from a bimodal advantage due to the integration of visual and auditory spatial cues.

@article\{bernhard-2011-bmtf,
  title =      "Bi-modal Task Faciliation in a Virtual Traffic Scenario
               through Spatialized Sound Rendering ",
  author =     "Matthias Bernhard and Karl Grosse and Michael Wimmer",
  year =       "2011",
  abstract =   "Audio rendering is generally used to increase the realism of
               Virtual Environments (VE). In addition, audio rendering may
               also improve the performance in specific tasks carried out
               in interactive applications such as games or simulators.  In
               this paper we investigate the effect of the quality of
               sound rendering on task performance in a task which is
               inherently vision dominated. The task is a virtual traffic
               gap crossing scenario with two elements: first, to
               discriminate crossable and uncrossable gaps in oncoming
               traffic, and second, to find the right timing to start
               crossing the street without an accident.  A study was
               carried out with 48 participants in an immersive Virtual
               Environment setup with a large screen and headphones.
               Participants were grouped into three different conditions.
               In the first condition, spatialized audio rendering with
               head-related transfer function (HRTF) filtering was used.
               The second group was tested with conventional stereo
               rendering, and the remaining group ran the experiment in a
               mute condition.  Our results give a clear evidence that
               spatialized audio improves task performance compared to the
               unimodal mute condition. Since all task-relevant information
               was in the participants' field-of-view, we conclude that an
               enhancement of task performance results from a bimodal
               advantage due to the integration of visual and auditory
               spatial cues.",
  pages =      "1--22",
  month =      nov,
  number =     "4",
  note =       "Article No. 24",
  issn =       "1544-3558",
  journal =    "ACM Transactions on Applied Perception",
  volume =     "8",
  keywords =   "audio-visual perception, virtual environments, pedestrian
               safety, bimodal task faciliation, head related transfer
               functions",
  URL =        "http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2011/bernhard-2011-bmtf/",
}