chongxin

Hi there,

I built a system using audio as user interface. The system has no any visual display at all. Driving will be the best usage scenario cause driver not getting distracted by visual. In theory, everything can be done or mapped to audio space. I'm not talking about voice recognize which I believe will never work well. I use simple tactile control device like rotary wheel/knob or touchpad/touchscreen. The idea is simple. Every function is in a virtual audio space. Driver may tweak a tactile control device to navigate in audio space. Think about old analog radio, you probably can tune in a radio station without looking at frequency panel. That's the idea! The project web site is at: http://audiouserinterface.org/

The system is built on beagleboard (beagleboard.org), fanless small ARM system with 8GB SD card. Using Linux 2.6.28, alsa audio, flite speech, etc. Powermate as control. The audio output is connected to FM tuner which also provides USB power supply to beagleboard. It's simple and clean setup, portable. It's quite fun to use it in driving. I never bother to look at it. There is demo video in my web site (though not in car demo). You will get idea. Here is the photo in car:






Chong Xin

MP3Car.com

 

mightycrown

I watched the video, it seems abit complicated/ but innovative.

DarquePervert

Not really.
The earliest PCs in vehicles weren't much different than this.

The Empeg hard-drive based head units were pretty much the same as this, although with a hard drive and in a DIN-sized casing and an LCD display.

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chongxin

The key point of the idea is not using visual display (LCD,LED...) so that driver not getting distracted. It may use similar rotary wheel but behind scene is entirely different. Auditory Display is the technology being used in here.
thanks,
-Chong

captcol

I had a quick look at the first video on your website and I can see potential for visually impaired people.

The problems that I see with the unit is that you still need a gui etc to create the playlists etc which I guess most people already do with a seperate computer, but again this doesn't help the visually impaired.

Also some of the text on your webiste is confusing in that you talk about interacting only in the auditory space but then above you say you are not talking about voice command, until you implement voice control you are not only interacting in the auditory space.

Its a interesting project and demonstrates your ability in creation of custom systems which is very impressive. I did have a giggle with this statement though
just my state of mind I think.

chongxin

The project doesn't target to visual impaired people though maybe useful for them. It targets to visual engaged environment for anybody (well, maybe no much difference). The system has built-in web server to enable user to setup user config and preference, includes playlist. You're right, it needs GUI to set it up. I'll figure this out later.

The auditory space is more on output side. Input control is done by tactile device like rotary wheel or touchpad. I'm not believer of voice control. User tweaks the input control device to navigate in virtual audio space which may contains: audio stream, text, message, switch, slider, lists... all with certain audible feedback associated.

The drawback of the system right now is that user can get lost easily. That's why the idea is still under developing. But the vision is clear: no LCD allowed.

MP3Car.com