3D Audio Navigation - Feasibility and Requirements for Older Adults

Independent mobility is crucial for maintaining the quality of life of older adults. However, independent navigation outdoors can become a challenge due to various physical changes and impairments in old age. In earlier work we have developed an acoustic augmented reality guidance system to guide blind and visually impaired people intuitively using virtual 3D audio sounds as way-points. In this work we investigate if the same acoustic augmented reality guidance can be used by older adults, as there are two important challenges: a) often older adults suffers from age related hearing impairments which might affect the ability of localizing sound in 3D and b) the specifics of the life circumstances and technology usage may differ substantially from the requirements of visually impaired people. In this paper we present our first approaches to tackle these two challenges. We have assessed the ability of older adults in localizing sound in 3D space and investigated which requirements need to be considered to create a guidance system that is useful and easy to use. Our results show that despite sometimes severe and asymmetrical hearing impairments, older adults are still able to localize sounds. We also found that in order to use such a guidance system older adults also need an additional visual user interface which supports conventional methods of navigating, e.g. overview of the route.