Publikation
Smart Sound Environments: Merging Intentional Soundscapes, Non-Speech Audio Cues and Ambient Intelligence
Ralf Jung
In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Acoustics 2008. International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP-08), June 29 - July 4, Paris, France, Pages 1-6, SFA, 2008.
Zusammenfassung
We introduce an intelligent audio notification system for multi-user environments that provides users with
information about events (e.g. important emails) in a more discreet and non-distracting way. The peripheral
awareness of individual-related events is done by using non-speech audio cues which can be seamlessly
integrated into artificial background soundscapes. These ambient soundscapes are self-composed with respect
to well-known perceptual constraints like auditive Gestalt laws as well as music psychological findings. To
follow a hierarchical approach for the notification sounds we use notification instruments, ambient noises and
traditional alert signals that are grouped by their level of intrusiveness. Since the notification system also
follows a human-centered approach it takes parameters like user preferences, his/her current position in the
environment and the type of event into consideration to decide which notification is the appropriate at this
time. In the paper, we will describe the architecture of the personalized ambient audio notification service,
compositional constraints as well as some findings of a user study in which we tested successfully the efficiency
of our system with 25 subjects.