{
  "patent_number": "US 10362429",
  "country": "US",
  "title": "How Wearable Tech Uses 3D Sound to Guide Visually Impaired People",
  "original_title": "Systems and methods for generating spatial sound information relevant to real-world environments",
  "summary": "A system that builds a 3D map of the world and uses spatial audio to act as a virtual guide, helping visually impaired users navigate around obstacles.",
  "what_it_does": "The system uses sensors to build a 3D model of the user's surroundings and tracks their position within that model in real time. It creates a '3D guide avatar'—a virtual point in space—that moves along a safe path. To help the user follow this path, the system generates spatial sound. By adjusting the volume and timing of audio between the left and right headphones, it tricks the brain into hearing a sound originating from a specific point in the real world. For example, if the user needs to turn left to avoid a wall, the system plays a sound that seems to come from that specific direction, effectively acting as an audio beacon.",
  "what_it_does_not_cover": [
    "Does not cover systems that rely solely on GPS without local 3D sensor data for obstacle detection.",
    "Does not cover standard text-to-speech navigation that provides verbal instructions (e.g., 'turn left in 50 feet') without spatial audio cues.",
    "Does not cover non-spatial audio systems that play sounds at equal volume in both ears regardless of the user's orientation."
  ],
  "filed": "2017-04-28",
  "granted": "2019-07-23",
  "expires": null,
  "status": "active",
  "holder": "California Institute of Technology",
  "holder_url": "https://patentbrief.org/company/california-institute-of-technology",
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Markus Meister",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/markus-meister"
    },
    {
      "name": "Yang Liu",
      "url": "https://patentbrief.org/inventor/yang-liu"
    }
  ],
  "times_cited": 0,
  "tags": [
    "consumer_electronics",
    "ai_ml",
    "software"
  ],
  "abstract": "Spatial exploration systems and methods of spatial exploration utilizing spatial sound in accordance with various embodiments of the invention are disclosed. In one embodiment, a spatial exploration system acquires sensor data and constructs a 3D spatial model of a surrounding real world environment. The system can instantiate a 3D object at a location within the 3D spatial model corresponding to the location of a real world feature, determine a location and orientation of a user within the 3D spatial model, and generate an audio clip containing vocalized information describing the feature. The spatial exploration system can then output a spatial sound describing the identified feature by modifying an audio clip based upon the position of the 3D object relative to the location and orientation of the user within the 3D spatial model to encode audio cues as to the location of the feature in the surrounding real world environment.",
  "url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/10362429/find-my-network",
  "markdown_url": "https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/10362429/find-my-network/md",
  "google_patents_url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US10362429",
  "relatedPatents": []
}