BatSight: A Navigation Game to Map Environmental Information into Audio Cues

BatSight functions as an innovative audio-augmented reality platform designed to facilitate navigation through physical environments by converting spatial data into intuitive musical cues. By utilizing a custom ultrasonic sonar headset, the system maps obstacles within a maze directly to auditory feedback, allowing blindfolded users to traverse complex spaces. The primary objective of this research is to evaluate how various sonification techniques—specifically variations in pitch, tempo, and their combination—impact human navigation performance, immersion, and the overall quality of the user experience.

The study reveals that while all three sonification methods enable successful navigation, the combination of pitch and tempo provides the most effective framework for enhancing the gaming experience and audio performance. Although quantitative metrics such as navigation speed and error rates showed no statistically significant variance between the individual techniques, qualitative feedback highlights that the integrated approach fosters a more engaging and immersive environment. These findings suggest that multi-modal audio feedback is superior for spatial awareness tasks, even when raw performance metrics remain comparable across simpler methods.

Beyond its technical contributions to audio-based gaming, the research serves as a bridge between entertainment technology and assistive navigation. Participants consistently reported that the game successfully cultivated empathy for the challenges faced by the visually impaired, underscoring the potential for such systems to serve dual purposes in accessibility and recreation. By establishing a robust methodology for mapping environmental information to sound, this work provides a foundation for future developments in non-visual navigation technologies and immersive audio design within the broader game industry.