Auditory Localization in Teleoperator and Virtual Environment Systems: Ideas,Issues, and Problems

摘要

The increasing availability and use of advanced high tech human machineinterfaces raise many interesting questions about what information should be presented to each sensory modality and how the information should be coded for a given modality. In this paper, attention is confined to the auditory component of the interface and, more specifically, to auditory localization. Both teleoperator systems and virtual-environment systems are considered, and attention is focused upon the opportunities and difficulties associated with the use of unnatural perceptual cues in these systems. Of central interest in this discussion is the use of such cues to improve resolution and thereby obtain systems with superlocalization capabilities. Advances in technology are creating major new challenges in the area of human machine interfaces and, in particular, the design of interfaces for teleoperator systems and virtual environment systems. In a teleoperator system, the human operator senses and operates upon a remote, inaccessible, or hazardous environment by means of a slave robot. Signals in the environment of the robot are sensed by devices on the robot, communicated back to the teleoperator interface, and displayed to the human operator; the responses of the human operator are sensed by devices at the interface, are communicated back to the robot, and are used to control the actions of the robot.