Spatial Audio Mapping for Immersive Hybrid Meeting Conversations
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Solution Overview
Problem
Remote participants in hybrid meetings often experience limited immersion due to difficulties in participating in side-chats or small group-discussions, as they cannot move around and interact with local participants as easily as in-person attendees.
Innovation Solution
A system that provides a selectable virtual listening position in hybrid meetings, allowing remote participants to choose a position on an audio map of the local meeting location, correlating it to specific microphones, and prioritizing their audio output for enhanced clarity and volume, thereby improving engagement with local conversations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If remote participants connect via virtual meeting platform, then remote participation is enabled, but immersion in local conversations is limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a virtual copy of the physical meeting space by mapping microphone locations to spatial positions. Remote participants can select and move to virtual listening positions that correspond to physical locations in the meeting room, effectively copying the spatial experience of being present in person.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent adds a virtual spatial dimension to the remote participation experience. By implementing a 2D or 3D audio map that represents the physical meeting space, remote participants can navigate and position themselves in virtual space, transforming a traditionally flat video conference interface into a spatially-aware environment.
2Loss of information
If audio from all microphones is provided equally, then complete meeting coverage is achieved, but clarity of specific conversations is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by allowing remote participants to focus audio attention on specific locations in the meeting room. When a participant selects a virtual listening position, the system prioritizes audio from microphones near that position, enhancing the clarity of conversations in that specific area while maintaining the ability to access other areas when needed.
Solution Approach 2:
The audio prioritization system is dynamic rather than static. Participants can move their virtual listening position to different locations in the meeting room, and the system dynamically adjusts which microphones are prioritized based on the current selected position, allowing flexible adaptation to different conversation needs throughout the meeting.
3Area of stationary object
If multiple microphones are correlated to virtual position, then coverage area is expanded, but audio source identification becomes complex
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements partial action by allowing a virtual listening position to be correlated with multiple microphones, but not all microphones in the system. The correlation is selective and location-based, where only microphones in or near the vicinity of the selected virtual position are associated with it, avoiding the complexity of universal microphone correlation.
Data Source
AI summary
A method, system, and computer-readable medium for providing a selectable virtual listening position in a hybrid meeting (e.g., a meeting with both virtual and in-person participants). An audio map of a local meeting location is provided to connected devices. A remote participant selects a position on the audio map as a virtual listening position in the local meeting location, which is correlated to one or more microphones in the local meeting location. Audio captured by the one or more correlated microphones is prioritized for the remote participant, where prioritizing the audio causes the audio to be output by the remote participant's device at a higher level (e.g., volume) than audio captured by other microphones in the local meeting location. Thus, the remote participant is provided a user experience that enables the remote participant to engage in a conversation occurring amongst one or more in-person attendees/participants at the local meeting location.