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Sensing Super-position: Visual Instrument Sensor ReplacementThe coming decade of fast, cheap and miniaturized electronics and sensory devices opens new pathways for the development of sophisticated equipment to overcome limitations of the human senses. This project addresses the technical feasibility of augmenting human vision through Sensing Super-position using a Visual Instrument Sensory Organ Replacement (VISOR). The current implementation of the VISOR device translates visual and other passive or active sensory instruments into sounds, which become relevant when the visual resolution is insufficient for very difficult and particular sensing tasks. A successful Sensing Super-position meets many human and pilot vehicle system requirements. The system can be further developed into cheap, portable, and low power taking into account the limited capabilities of the human user as well as the typical characteristics of his dynamic environment. The system operates in real time, giving the desired information for the particular augmented sensing tasks. The Sensing Super-position device increases the image resolution perception and is obtained via an auditory representation as well as the visual representation. Auditory mapping is performed to distribute an image in time. The three-dimensional spatial brightness and multi-spectral maps of a sensed image are processed using real-time image processing techniques (e.g. histogram normalization) and transformed into a two-dimensional map of an audio signal as a function of frequency and time. This paper details the approach of developing Sensing Super-position systems as a way to augment the human vision system by exploiting the capabilities of the human hearing system as an additional neural input. The human hearing system is capable of learning to process and interpret extremely complicated and rapidly changing auditory patterns. The known capabilities of the human hearing system to learn and understand complicated auditory patterns provided the basic motivation for developing an image-to-sound mapping system.
Document ID
20060019119
Acquisition Source
Ames Research Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Maluf, David A.
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Schipper, John F.
(NASA Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 23, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2006
Publication Information
ISBN: 0-7803-9546
Subject Category
Acoustics
Meeting Information
Meeting: IEEE Aerospace Conference 2006
Location: Big Sky, MT
Country: United States
Start Date: March 6, 2006
End Date: March 11, 2006
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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