EUWB,
2011, with
Philips
From 2009 to 2011, I pursued a Professional Doctorate (PDEng.) in Engineering on User System Interaction at TU/e, Eindhoven University of Technology. For the second year of the Doctorate, I worked on an R&D project for Philips Consumer Lifestyle. Philips participated in a European collaborative project, called EUWB (Coexisting Short Range Radio by Advanced Ultra-Wideband Radio Technology), regarding Ultra Wideband radio technology and its applications in consumer technology. My work focused on bringing together UWB localization algorithms with Philips Surround Sound technology to illustrate how the listening experience of a novice consumer can be enhanced when the system knows her location in the room.
The problem we wanted to solve was to make the listening experience independent of speakers' placement and listener's position in the room. A Surround Sound System can optimally reproduce sound and provide an immersive sound experience to the user, when the installation follows a pentagon scheme and the listener is in the middle of the setup (the sweetspot). In reality, decoration and furniture dictate the placement of the speakers and the listening positions. Deviation of the optimal setup can cause a distorted sound image, definitely noticed by experts, arguably by novice listeners.
Creating 'Smarter' Surround Sound for optimal listening experience at Philips.
Our objective and my role was two-fold: first, we wanted to create two demonstrators where two different Philips Surround Sound Systems, the Ambisound Soundbar and a 5.1 Home Theater Sound System would be integrated with UWB localization algorithms so that they adjust the sound according to listener's position; second, we wanted to test whether novice listeners would perceive the difference.
I implemented the demonstrators while remotely collaborating with the technical partners. I also extensively tested the UWB localization platforms and contributed to the improvement of the localization algorithms used for our application. The most important part of my work was to design the listening experiments where novice and expert listeners participated. I had to carefully choose the lab setup, the room, the audio tracks and the questionnaires. In a nuthshell, the results indicated that even the novice users could benefit from the UWB localization technology in their listening experience, particular in the case of rich audio excerpts, such as movie soundtracks. I finally presented the evaluation results and run a live demonstration during the EUWB project’s final review in Paris and at the Eindhoven University of Technology at the end of September 2011. The report of my project can be found in the website of my academic supervisor, assistant professor Jun Hu here.