Temporal and amplitude aspects in sonically simulating walking over bumps, holes and flat surfaces

Abstract

This paper describes an experiment whose goal is to assess the role of temporal and amplitude variations in sonically simulating the act of walking over a bump or a hole. In particular, it has been investigated whether the timing between heel and toe and the timing between footsteps, as well as variations in the amplitude of heel and toe affect the perception of walking on unflat surfaces. Forty five subjects participated to three between-subjects experiments where they were asked to interact with a desktop system simulating bumps, holes and flat surfaces by means of auditory cues. Results show that it is possible to simulate a bump or a hole by only using temporal information in the auditory modality. Furthermore results show that the proposed amplitude variations are not sufficient to provide the information concerning uneven surfaces.