An experimental study on the role of 3D sound in augmented reality environment

Investigation of augmented reality (AR) environments has become a popular research topic for engineers, computer and cognitive scientists. Although application oriented studies focused on audio AR environments have been published, little work has been done to vigorously study and evaluate the important research questions of the effectiveness of three-dimensional (3D) sound in the AR context, and to what extent the addition of 3D sound would contribute to the AR experience.

Thus, we have developed two AR environments and performed vigorous experiments with human subjects to study the effects of 3D sound in the AR context. The study concerns two scenarios. In the first scenario, one participant must use vision only and vision with 3D sound to judge the relative depth of augmented virtual objects. In the second scenario, two participants must cooperate to perform a joint task in a game-based AR environment.

Hence, the goals of this study are (1) to access the impact of 3D sound on depth perception in a single-camera AR environment, (2) to study the impact of 3D sound on task performance and the feeling of ‘human presence and collaboration’, (3) to better understand the role of 3D sound in human–computer and human–human interactions, (4) to investigate if gender can affect the impact of 3D sound in AR environments. The outcomes of this research can have a useful impact on the development of audio AR systems, which provide more immersive, realistic and entertaining experiences by introducing 3D sound. Our results suggest that 3D sound in AR environment significantly improves the accuracy of depth judgment and improves task performance. Our results also suggest that 3D sound contributes significantly to the feeling of human presence and collaboration and helps the subjects to ‘identify spatial objects’.