Hands-free audio control device
AssigneeMONKEYmedia, Inc.
InventorsEric Justin Gould Bear, Rachel M. Strickland, Jim McKee
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Traditional head-mounted display experiences require a hand controller (e.g. thumbstick, touchpad, gamepad, keyboard, etc.) to manipulate audio controls. The invention is a hands-free, body-based navigation technology that puts the participant's body in direct control of movement through sonic space. Participants lean towards a sound source to make it louder and lean away to make it quieter. In some embodiments, the more a participant leans, the faster the volume changes. Because the interactions were designed to respond to natural bearing and balancing instincts, movement coordination is intuitive and easy to learn.
Claims30
A system for optimizing the audibility of a collection of digital audio streams, comprising:
- a head-mounted audio device configured to play a plurality of digital audio streams to a person wearing the head-mounted audio device, the head-mounted audio device being associated with one or more microprocessors and one or more sensors, wherein the head-mounted audio device, in combination with the microprocessors and sensors, is configured to cause at least one of the audio streams having a location in space to increase in volume when the person leans toward said location while causing decrease in the volume of any audio stream with a different location in space that the person is leaning away from.
A method for optimizing the audibility of a collection of digital audio streams, comprising:
- playing, by a computer processor associated with one or more sensors, one or more digital audio streams to a person wearing a head-mounted audio device;
- and
- causing, by the computer processor, at least one of the audio streams having a location in space to increase in volume when the person leans toward said location while causing a decrease in the volume of any audio stream with a different location in space that the person is leaning away from.
One or more computer readable media (CRM) comprising instructions that, when executed by a computer associated with a head-mounted audio device and one or more sensors, are capable of playing a collection of digital audio streams to a person and causing at least one of the audio streams to having a location in space to increase in volume when the person leans toward said location while causing a decrease in the volume of any audio stream with a different location in space that the person is leaning away from.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.