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News Release

March 12, 1998

Hitachi Develops New System That Represents Windows(R) Screen in Sound and Voice

- Three-dimensional sound generation permits PC operation without viewing screen -

Hitachi, Ltd. and a team headed by Prof. Hareo Hamada of the Acoustic Laboratory, Tokyo Denki University, have developed a system that permits a PC user to work with Windows(R) by ear, with no need to view the screen. The system makes this possible by representing cursor position, icons, windows and other graphical objects in a 3-D sound field created using 3-D sound generation to convert position, distance and direction into loudness and arrival time differences between the sound reaching each of the users ears. Visually disabled persons will particularly welcome this breakthrough as offering greater opportunity for active social involvement, since it allows them to operate a PC nearly as easily as a person with no visual impairment. The 3-D sound field processing board for the new system incorporates Hitachi's SH-3 microprocessor from the SuperH(TM) RISC engine family.

Part of the system development work was conducted with the support of the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization(NEDO) under the Industrial Science and Technology Frontier Program of the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology (Research and Development of Medical and Welfare Apparatus).

Most of today's PCs and Workstations employ the GUI system to display large amounts of complicated graphical information. Until now this system has been an obstacle to use of computers and other information processing equipment by visually disabled persons because it is very difficult to operate without viewing the screen and the graphical information is not easy to convert into non-visual form.

The newly developed system applies 3-D sound generation technologies developed by the Acoustic Laboratory through many years of research to enable non-visual PC operation using the Windows(R) desktop. Its main features are that:

  1. The movement of the cursor with mouse operation is output as sound.
  2. Entry of the cursor into the region of an icon, window or other object is announced by a distinctive sound and a voice announcement of the object name.
  3. Object size and shape are represented by a sound image running along the image periphery and depth by the loudness of the sound.
  4. Non-visual operation is made easier by causing the cursor to stick to an object when brought near it or when the object is selected via the keyboard.

The results of this research will be reported at the National Conference of the Information Processing Society of Japan to be held at Faculty of Science and Engineering of Chuo University from March 17 to 19, 1998.

Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 1996 (ending March 31, 1997) consolidated sales of 8,523 billion yen (68.7 billion dollar). The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products, and power and industrial equipment. For more information about Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi's Web site at: http://www.hitachi.co.jp

*GUI: Graphical User Interface Principle of 3-D sound generation

A person perceives the direction and distance of a sound source from the differences in loudness, arrival time etc. between the sounds heard by one ear and the other. These differences are present not only in the sound waves reaching the ears directly from the sound source but also in the waves that pass to the ears through ambient spatial transmission by reflection from the walls, floor and other objects. In addition, they are affected by head related transmission factors such as sound reflection, refraction and resonance produced by the listener's head, shoulders, and conchae.

In 3-D sound generation, these sound transmission properties are used to compute how sound will travel from a certain location to each ear of the listener. This information is then used to synthesize sound waves from appropriate sound sources so as to give the impression that the sound is coming from that location.
*Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation of the USA in the United States and other countries.

WRITTEN BY Secretary's Office
All Rights Reserved, Copyright (C) 1998, Hitachi, Ltd.