Recently at SIGGRAPH 2011 in Vancouver, I witnessed a cool new way to use directed sound, as demonstrated by The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). KAUST is the premier university for technology in Saudi Arabia and they are partnered with UC San Diego.
In this display, KAUST set up a demonstration where two people stand just two feet apart in front of a large display. With the use of directed sound these people hear two completely different broadcasts. As I stood listening to a news feed on the right side of the LCD display, I could hear the dulcet sounds of the English language. By moving two feet over to the left, I could hear only the audio’s Arabic counterpart. There were no headphones required—all I did was walk a couple of feet either to the left or the right.
Here’s a quick link to KAUST and their work presented at SIGGRAPH .
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