Summary

Virtual Acoustic Space is a research and development team working in the percepcion of the space using sounds only.

An electronic device that allows blind people to receive spatial information from their frontal enviroment has been developed. This information is perceived through an auditory image, and many other intermediate and collateral results have been obtained.

The main goal is to create for the individual the illusion that the perceived objects are covered by small sound sources emitting in a particular and sustained way. Therefore, a virtual acustic world is generated, where the physical objects emit sounds from all the coordinates of its surface. The first results validate the hipothesis that it is possible from this stimulus to generate an experience of global and sustained presence of different objects inside the perception field, with its shape, dimensions and location.

Two technological pillars are the basis of this project: machine vision and sound spatialization. The information of what coordinates from the perception field are ocupied by objects is obtained from the images captured by two microcameras placed at eye level (artificial vision) and it is translated in a sum of sounds that are sent, at real time, to the user through headphones. These sounds are processed (spatialization) in such a way that the individual perceives that they come from those coordinates previously detected.
Therefore, a visual three-dimension coordinates image is transformed in an acustic three-dimension image.

Many phases of the project have been completed, and is important to emphasize the development of several portable prototypes, as well as necessary infrastructures for the measurement of the descriptive functions of transference of the head (HRTF), indispensable for the adaptation to each concrete user.

The commercialization of systems based on this new perception has been always one of our objectives, because thay will vey useful for the blind people.