ATSI: Augmented and Tangible Sonic Interaction

Abstract

This paper presents ATSI, a system for sonic augmentation of physical objects with spatialized sounds and their control by gestural interaction. The implementation combines tracking of the users' hands and head with commodity hardware, and binaural spatialized sound rendering over headphones. The user may attach sounds to common objects and the system maintains the correct spatial auditory perspective inside the augmented scene during the actions of attaching sounds, picking and moving the sounding objects, or exploring the scene. Attention has been given to the binaural rendering of distance cues to support the above actions with perceptual realism in small scale environments and for many objects. Through a user study assessing the localization accuracy that can be achieved with the system, we show that sound rendering performance looks appropriate for applications such as auditory displays for context and object specific information, sonic design for architectural planning and interior design, and music applications.