Events Calendar

Capture and Reproduction of Spatial Audio

Speaker: Ramani Duraiswami, Perceptual Interfaces and Reality Lab, University of Maryland.Abstract: Our ability to perceive space using sound has been understood for a while, but not much exploited in audio systems designed for entertainment, augmented/virtual reality or data display. In this talk I will focus on our research in various aspects of spatial audio and scene understanding. Spherical microphone arrays provide a means of spatial audio capture and sound scene analysis. I will discuss several spherical arrays we have built, their theoretical analysis, and their use in beamforming sound, and in representing spatial sound. Of particular interest is the combination of arrays and video cameras, to obtain more complete scene understanding. We show that the spherical array can be treated as a camera, and combined with normal video cameras to provide geometric scene understanding. I will also discuss the recreation of spatial auditory reality over headphones, using the captured sound and head related transfer functions. A novel method for measurement of HRTFs invented in our lab will also be presented. Bio: Ramani Duraiswami, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and at the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland. He has affiliate appointments in the Departments of Electrical Engineering, and in the Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing Program. Prof. Duraiswami is director of the Perceptual Interfaces and Reality Lab. and has broad research interests in computational audition, scientific computing, computer vision and machine learning and has over 130 publications in these areas. He received an undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay; and a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University. More information on his research can be found at www.umiacs.umd.edu/~ramani Host: Prof. Shrikanth Narayanan

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mary Francis