Improved Haptic Music Player with Auditory Saliency Estimation

• Published in: Haptics: Neuroscience, Devices, Modeling, and Applications pp. 232 - 240
• Main Authors: Hwang, Inwook, Choi, Seungmoon
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Auditory saliency; Haptic I/O; Multiband; Vibrotactile music
• ISBN: 3662441926; 9783662441923
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662-44193-0_30

This paper presents improvements made on our previous haptic music player designed to enhance music listening experience with mobile devices. Our previous haptic music player featured with dual-band rendering; it delivers bass beat sensations in music with rough superimposed vibrations and high-frequency salient features in music with high-frequency smooth vibrations. This work extends the previous algorithm by taking into account auditory saliency in determining the intensity of vibration to be rendered. The auditory saliency is estimated in real-time from several auditory features in music. The feasibility of multiband rendering was also tested using a wideband actuator. We carried out a user study to evaluate the subjective performance of three haptic music playing modes: saliency-improved dual-band rendering, saliency-improved multiband rendering, and our previous dual-band rendering. Experimental results showed that the new dual-band mode has perceptual merits over the multiband mode and the previous dual-band mode, particularly for rock or dance music. The results can contribute to enhancing multimedia experience by means of vibrotactile rendering of music.