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Kent Lyons, Maribeth Gandy, Thad Starner
College of Computing
801 Atlantic Drive
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA, 30332 USA
+14048943152
{kent, maribeth, thad}@cc.gatech.edu
Keywords
Audio, augmented reality, wearable computing, context-awareness
Nomadic Radio [5] utilizes sound to inform the user of incoming messages and events. It further permits the user to control the audio's intrusiveness level. Audio Aura [4] explores several different soundscapes for displaying ambient information. Both systems provide a hint of the information content and significance through ambient sounds. They try not to burden the user or deflect the user's attention away from his/her current task unnecessarily while presenting information. In contrast, Guided by Voices explicitly engages the user in the audio environment through narration, sound effects and ambient audio. It exploits player location and history to play contextually appropriate sounds and uses lightweight and inexpensive wearable computers that require minimal explicit user input.
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Users of the system carry a simple wearable computer that receives location information from transmitters placed in the environment. Each transmitter sends out a unique ID over a limited range creating a small cell. The wearable then uses the cell's ID to infer location. The current location is used in conjunction with the list of previously visited locations and the order in which they are visited to play contextually appropriate sounds from the augmented reality.
The users carry a simple wearable computer that is responsible for
tracking the user's location and controlling the playback of sounds.
The wearable consists of an off-the-shelf MPEG 1 Layer 3
(MP3) Diamond Rio
digital audio player, a Microchip PIC
microcontroller, and a RF receiver (Figure 1
Left).
The PIC decodes information from the RF receiver into location
information and controls the MP3 player, including selecting the
correct track and starting and stopping the device at appropriate times.
The PIC is responsible for tracking the user's position over time and
updates the user's state in the augmented
reality. That information is then used to select and play appropriate
sounds stored on the MP3 player.
The location beacon consists of a PIC and RF transmitter (Figure 1 Right). Each beacon transmits a unique ID approximately once every second. The range of the transmitters was deliberately limited to create a small cell with a diameter of between 5 to 30 feet that largely depends on antenna configuration. The beacons are small, low powered and inexpensive. Currently each beacon should last approximately one year on a 9V battery but eventually we hope to environmentally power the beacons to avoid batteries altogether. We plan to deploy the beacons as an economical infrastructure for general use to gather location information for a variety of wearable devices [6].
The use of the the beacon system greatly reduces the complexity of gathering the position of the user for the augmented reality. Other techniques such as vision or magnetic tracking devices typically require much more computational power, are more expensive and cover a smaller range. Other beacon systems have been created using infrared (IR), but they require either line of sight, limiting the area covered by a beacon or flood an entire area increasing the cell size to a whole room. Using RF we eliminate both problems and we are able to create a relatively small cell.
The largest problem with RF beacons from a technical standpoint is the error caused by noise and interference. It was found that the MP3 player generated a lot of interference while playing a sound, but very little performing its other functions. Collisions of transmissions between beacons is another source of error. Although the system is designed such that transmitters are spaced apart into cells, there are bound to be areas of overlap when trying to get complete location coverage. To minimize this type of interference the beacons use the transmitter for as little time as possible. Currently a single byte provides more than enough unique IDs. Most error detection or correction techniques are designed for systems that send much more data (on the order of kilobytes) and typically they either double the amount of data sent, or add on extra bytes with error detection information. In either case using these techniques would greatly increase the amount of data being sent and correspondingly increase the chance of a collision between transmissions. In our system we found that the simple heuristic of waiting to update position until the same ID was received twice was sufficient to block most errors. Once we deploy this system for general use we will have to increase the ID space and then more general error detection/correction schemes may become a better option.
The setting we chose for Guided by Voices is a medieval
fantasy world where the player wanders through a soundscape of
trolls, dragons, and wizards. Various sounds from the setting are
presented as the player explores the environment passing through a
dragon's lair and a troll's bridge, meeting friends
or foes and gathering objects like a sword and a spellbook. The game
play is similar to traditional role-playing games such as Dungeons and
Dragons (D&D) where the player is a character on a quest.
As in D&D the player does not directly interact with computers or
graphics. Instead, the wearable observes the player's actions and
functions as the game master. All of the game's input comes from where
the player chooses to walk in the real world environment. The
narrative of the story changes depending on the paths of the
players. The wearable keeps track of the player's state checking if
he/she has acquired the necessary objects for a specific location.
Rich environments can be created because each location can serve
multiple purposes and play different roles in different situations.
One could look upon this audio-only environment as being less immersive than a traditional computer game with graphics. However, we see several advantages to the Guided by Voices game play. For one, instead of moving an avatar in the computer world the player physically moves through a real world space. This aids in immersing the player in the game play. Also, many people can play this game simultaneously in the same physical space creating a real life social aspect to the game. Unlike most multi-player PC based video games, Guided by Voices brings people together to the same geographical location. The game could be extended easily to capitalize and enhance this social interaction. The audio-only nature of the game takes advantage of the player's imagination drawing them further into the game. For example, instead of being presented with a rendered dragon that may or may not be frightening, the player gets to interact with his/her idea of what a frightening dragon should look like. The sound elements of the game are designed to aid this imagination process.
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As the player enters a new site the wearable receives the unique ID from the beacon in that location and updates its internal position information. The current game state, location information and rule of the game are then used to select and play the appropriate sound clips and in turn update the game state. For example, the player starts the game with no items. If he/she walks over to the beacon marked by a stuffed rat, he/she will hear a narrative sound clip that indicates that he/she has encountered a rat and has picked it up and has placed it in his/her inventory. Later on, if the player walks over to the beacon representing a knight one of two narrative sound clips will play. If the player has previously procured the rat the narrative will play out such that the player slays the knight and steals his sword. The player can then continue his/her quest having successfully defeated a enemy and having won another item vital to the completion of the total quest. However, if the player has not procured the rat the narrative will play out such that the knight defeats the player. The narrator then explains to the player that he/she must start the quest again. In another instance the player may find the beacon that represents the cage where his/her friend is imprisoned, but will not be able to virtually unlock the door until he/she has procured the magic spellbook from another site. The state diagram (Figure 2) shows all the beacons that are present in the Guided by Voices game space. Below each space is the logic that controls the sound clips that will be played and how the game state will be effected when a player comes within range of the beacon. There is more than one winning path through the set of beacons, ranging from a path that consists of visiting only three beacons to one that visits all nine beacons.
One interaction problem that exists in the current implementation of Guided by Voices results from the range of the RF transmitters used at each site. These transmitters have a wide range compared to the small props at each location and the boundary of the transmitter is not apparent to the user. Therefore, it is not clear to users when they will be in range to trigger the sounds for a particular site. This can result in users inadvertently entering sites they had intended to avoid. One way to fix this problem would be to modify the transmitters to have a much smaller range so that the site is not entered until the user is right next to the beacon and prop. However this would require developing a new radio transmitter instead of using a commercially available one. Another solution that would also result in richer game play would be to incorporate time into the system. Currently the game state is updated once the player enters a new space and accordingly sounds are played immediately. The game could be redesigned so that the player is first informed that they have entered a new space. The player could then choose to leave with nothing happening, or he/she could stay triggering the system to update the game state and play the sounds for that location. For example, if the player entered the site that contained the dragon narrative, he/she would first hear the heavy breathing of the dragon and the cave ambiance. If the player remained in the range of the beacon he/she would wake up the dragon and end up fighting it. However, if the player quickly retreated from this location the narrative would stop and the player would have avoided the encounter with the dragon.
When creating the sounds for this environment ``real'' sounds were not appropriate. It is not enough to simply record a sword being drawn from a sheath. Instead, a sound effect must match the listener's mental model of what a sword should sound like [1]. This is especially important in this game which lacks visual cues. It is known that if a sound effect does not match the player's mental model, no matter how ``real'', he/she will not be able to recognize it [3]. Therefore, creation of a caricature of the sound is important [1]. The setting of this game is also in a fantasy world so there were seldom ``real'' sounds available. Instead we tapped into the cultural conditioning of the player to make the narrative clear.
Another design challenge lay in the fact that the game is a nonlinear narrative. This could cause for a weakening of artistic control due to the fact that the user is in control of the narrative flow [1]. Special care was focused on content design so the story's elements would be consistent throughout the various paths of the game. A player's actions weave small narrative elements (sound events) together to form a larger story. An additional potential obstacle to audio design is that this game might be played in a noisy environment through which the player is trying to navigate at the same time as play the game. The sounds are therefore especially clear and exaggerated, and all speech is well enunciated.
Each sound event has three layers: ambient sounds, sound effects, and narration. We feel that for the game to be immersive, entertaining, clear and not frustrating all of these elements are necessary.
In the first system the audio is directly triggered by the current location. The system used for Guided By Voices is of the second type but has no transmitters on the wearable. Each user can share the same physical space, but the augmented realities are completely separate. Placing transmitters on the wearables would allow the users to interact in the virtual world linking the personal augmented realities together. An example using this additional infrastructure would by to extend Guided by Voices such that there is a location that requires two players to cooperate to get a particular item. Likewise, by using the third type of infrastructure and having the environment track the users, Guided by Voices could be extended to allow locations to have a memory of who visited over time and across users. If one player's actions in a location destroyed a monster, when another player visited they would encounter the remnants of the battle. This infrastructure would further link the augment realities of the users and extend the abilities to cooperate and compete with other users.
The location information provided by the positioning infrastructure poses some privacy concerns for users of the augmented reality. With the current Guided by Voices configuration only the environment transmits IDs and all location information is local to each wearable. By mounting transmitters on other wearable systems (the second configuration) the users of the augmented reality can track their proximity to other users. Although the location of a wearable is no longer private to each person, only the other people physically present at the same time and place receive the other user's location. In the third configuration the environment tracks the users position and records that information. This poses the greatest privacy concerns because other people could potentially query the environment about a user's location and a great deal of effort would be needed to make sure that the environment is secure and trusted. For the last two configurations that have a transmitter on the wearable the user could, in theory, selectively reveal himself/herself to the environmental infrastructure if such exposure would add desired functionality. Selecting the correct type of infrastructure to support augmented realities must weigh the concerns about the privacy of user's location against the added functionality achieved.
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