From the perspective of human factors engineering, the inclusion of spatial audio within a human-machine interface is advantageous from several perspectives. Demonstrated benefits include the ability to monitor multiple streams of speech and non-speech warning tones using a ‘cocktail party’ advantage, and for aurally-guided visual search. Other potential benefits include the spatial coordination and interaction of multimodal events, and evaluation of new communication technologies and alerting systems using virtual simulation. Many of these technologies were developed at NASA Ames Research Center, beginning in 1985. This paper reviews examples and describes the advantages of spatial sound in NASA-related technologies, including space operations, aeronautics, and search and rescue. The work has involved hardware and software development as well as basic and applied research.

Authors: Begault, Durand; Wenzel, Elizabeth M.; Godfroy, Martine; Miller, Joel D.; Anderson, Mark R.
Affiliations: Dell Services-Perot Systems, Plano, TX, USA; NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA; San José State University Foundation, San José, CA, USA(See document for exact affiliation information.)
AES Conference: 40th International Conference: Spatial Audio: Sense the Sound of Space (October 2010)
Paper Number: 1-1
Publication Date: October 8, 2010
Subject: Applications of Spatial Audio

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