The use of inertial measurement units in virtual reality systems for auralization applications

摘要

Auralisation finds increasingly more important applications in everyday life with the development and broad availability of virtual reality technologies and systems. This paper presents a new research project focused on auralisation implementation in different hardware systems, mainly by using binaural technology with an added head tracking system. Besides commercially available VR systems, the possibility of using inexpensive inertia measurement sensors connected to simple embedded systems will be investigated as an alternative auralisation system for adding natural aural experience in VR applications. In addition, the possibility of using widely available smartphones with already integrated movement and direction sensors for auralisation purposes using a binaural system will be examined. The listed platforms will be measured and compared considering their precision, latency and quality of the virtual sound field using practical auralisation examples in laboratory conditions, and in real life situation in-situ. Measurement plans for sensor parameters and characteristics, such as delay, sensitivity and accuracy, are presented in the paper for both IMU sensors connected to an embedded system and sensors integrated in smartphones.