Enhancing Manual Scan Registration Using Audio Cues

Abstract. Indoor mapping and modelling requires that acquired data be processed by editing, fusing, formatting the data, amongst other operations. Currently the manual interaction the user has with the point cloud (data) while processing it is visual. Visual interaction does have limitations, however. One way of dealing with these limitations is to augment audio in point cloud processing. Audio augmentation entails associating points of interest in the point cloud with audio objects. In coarse scan registration, reverberation, intensity and frequency audio cues were exploited to help the user estimate depth and occupancy of space of points of interest. Depth estimations were made reliably well when intensity and frequency were both used as depth cues. Coarse changes of depth could be estimated in this manner. The depth between surfaces can therefore be estimated with the aid of the audio objects. Sound reflections of an audio object provided reliable information of the object surroundings in some instances. For a point/area of interest in the point cloud, these reflections can be used to determine the unseen events around that point/area of interest. Other processing techniques could benefit from this while other information is estimated using other audio cues like binaural cues and Head Related Transfer Functions. These other cues could be used in position estimations of audio objects to aid in problems such as indoor navigation problems.