Disney researchers use encoded audio signals to provide 'second screen' experiences at most venues

System uses ad hoc smartphone networks as microphone arrays

2013-07-19

(Press-News.org) Providing a "second screen" experience for audiences at movie theaters, stadiums and other public venues need not require a special wireless infrastructure. Instead, a system developed by Disney Research, Zürich, uses the venue's regular sound system to transmit text, games or other information to smartphones using only an audio signal.

The smartphones carried by many audience members provide not only a means for viewing content that supplements a movie or sporting event, but comprise an ad hoc microphone network that helps transmit the content among all of the participants in the venue.

"Using a tablet or smartphone to interact with content while watching a TV show or a football game at home has become second nature to many people," said Stefan Mangold, a senior research scientist at Disney Research, Zürich. "Our multi-channel acoustic data transmission system makes it possible to provide the same experience in virtually any location around the world."

Mangold and his collaborators, Roman Frigg and Thomas R. Gross of ETH Zürich, will discuss and demonstrate their system during the Mobile Workshop at SIGGRAPH 2013, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, July 21-25 in Anaheim, Calif.

In this system, supplemental content is encoded within a movie soundtrack, music or other audio programming typical of a public venue. Groups of connected smartphones serve as a microphone network, receiving the encoded messages and sharing them with each other using their built-in Wi-Fi connections. One of the phones then decodes the messages and shares them with the rest of the network. The encoded messages are not noticeable to people and do not bother those who choose not to use a companion device. No additional loudspeakers are necessary and normal volumes can be maintained. Audience members can choose whether to connect their smartphones into the network.

It's not a fool-proof way to transmit data, Mangold acknowledged. "The farther away your smartphone is from the speakers, the more likely you are to lose the signal or get a jumbled message," he said. "But that's why we join all of the smartphones into a distributed network, so the data stream is shared by all of the phones, enabling errors to be identified and corrected. The great part is that the more smartphones are in use on the network, the better the quality of the data is for everyone."

With smartphones increasingly boasting fast graphics and signal processing units and reduced power consumption, this sort of cooperative resource sharing becomes more feasible and attractive, he noted, enabling such applications as mobile social games. Privacy and security concerns must be addressed, but the ability to create ad hoc smartphone networks promises to enable people to share their experiences immediately in a wide variety of venues.

### More information, including a video, is available at http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/mobile-phone-arrays/. About Disney Research Disney Research is a network of research laboratories supporting The Walt Disney Company. Its purpose is to pursue scientific and technological innovation to advance the company's broad media and entertainment efforts. Disney Research is managed by an internal Disney Research Council co-chaired by Disney-Pixar's Ed Catmull and Walt Disney Imagineering's Bruce Vaughn, and including the directors of the individual labs. It has facilities in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Boston and Zürich. Research topics include computer graphics, video processing, computer vision, robotics, radio and antennas, wireless communications, human-computer interaction, displays, data mining, machine learning and behavioral sciences.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

All in the eyes: Disney Research demos technology for richly expressive 3D printed eyes

2013-07-19

Face-to-face communication begins with the eyes, a crucial factor in the design of interactive physical characters. By employing 3D printing, Disney Research, Pittsburgh has developed a new technology that is uniquely expressive, robust and adaptable for creating interactive characters' eyes. The technology, PAPILLON, will be demonstrated at ACM SIGGRAPH 2013, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, July 21-25 in Anaheim, California. The classic approach in the entertainment industry is to build mechanically actuated eyes. Though ...

First global atlas of marine plankton reveals remarkable underwater world

2013-07-19

Under the microscope, they look like they could be from another planet, but these microscopic organisms inhabit the depths of our oceans in nearly infinite numbers. To begin to identify where, when, and how much oceanic plankton can be found around the globe, a group of international researchers have compiled the first ever global atlas cataloguing marine plankton ranging in size from bacteria to jellyfish. The atlas was published today in a special issue of the journal Earth System Science Data. The atlas, known as the Marine Ecosystem Biomass Data (MAREDAT), is the ...

New plan of attack in cancer fight

2013-07-19

New research conducted by Harvard scientists is laying out a roadmap to one of the holy grails of modern medicine – a cure for cancer. As described paper recently published in eLife, Nowak, a professor of Mathematics and of Biology and director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, and co-author Ivana Bozic, a postdoctoral fellow in mathematics, show that, under certain conditions, using two drugs in a "targeted therapy" – a treatment approach designed to interrupt cancer's ability to grow and spread – nearly all cancers could be effectively cured. Though not ...

Disney researchers create computer models that capture style and process of portrait artists

2013-07-19

By monitoring artists as they sketch human faces, stroke by stroke, scientists at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, have built computer models that learn each artist's drawing style, how they use strokes and how they select features to highlight as they interpret a face into a portrait. A better understanding of this abstraction process, the researchers stated, not only is interesting from an artistic point of view, but also can help in developing artificial drawing tools. "There's something about an artist's interpretation of a subject that people find compelling," said ...

The genetic key to conquering cholera

2013-07-19

Researchers have long understood that genetics can play a role in how susceptible people are to contracting cholera, but a team of Harvard scientists is now uncovering evidence of genetic changes that might also help protect some people from contracting the deadly disease. Based on genetic data gathered from hundreds of people in Bangladesh, a research team made up of Harvard faculty and scientists from the Broad Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital were able to a number of areas in the genome – some of which are responsible for certain immune system functions, ...

Black bears return to Missouri indicates healthy forests

2013-07-19

For nearly a century, the only bears known to reside in Missouri were on the state flag or in captivity. Unregulated hunting and habitat loss had wiped out most black bears in Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma by the 1920s. Now, thanks to a reintroduction program in Arkansas during the 50s and 60s, hundreds of bears amble through the forests of southern Missouri, according to a joint study by University of Missouri, Mississippi State University, and Missouri Department of Conservation biologists, who warn that although the bear population is still small, outdoor recreationists ...

Stanford expert says Internet's backbone can readily be made more sustainable

2013-07-19

Most big data centers, the global backbone of the Internet, could slash their greenhouse gas emissions by 88 percent by switching to efficient, off-the-shelf equipment and improving energy management, according to new research. The carbon emissions generated by a search on Google or a post on Facebook are related mostly to three things: the computing efficiency of IT (information technology) data center equipment, like servers, storage and network switches; the amount of electricity a data center's building uses for things other than computing, primarily cooling; and ...

Rice researchers part of new LHC discovery

2013-07-19

HOUSTON – (July 19, 2013) – A discovery facilitated by Rice University's contribution to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will impact scientists' search for dark matter in the universe. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced in Switzerland this morning that researchers on two separate LHC experiments have succeeded in measuring "one of the rarest measurable processes in physics," the decay of B-subscript-s mesons into two muons. The evidence, which scientists have been seeking for 25 years, matches predictions made using the Standard Model of ...

California's Mountain Fire

2013-07-19

NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of California's Mountain Fire on July 18 as the satellite passed overhead in space. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard Aqua captured an image of the smoke and heat from California's Mountain Fire on July 18 at 21:00 UTC (5 p.m. EDT/2 p.m. PDT). MODIS has the ability to detect hot spots or fires and they appear red in the image. At the time of the image, the light brown smoke plume was blowing west-northwest. The Mountain Fire started on July 15 at 1:43 p.m. near the junction ...

Regenstrief, IU study: Caregivers open to stopping cancer screening as dementia progresses

2013-07-19

INDIANAPOLIS -- Research from the Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University Center for Aging Research has found that many family caregivers of older adults with dementia are willing to consider stopping cancer screening of the elderly individual; they are also relieved when the older adult's physician brings it up. "This openness of dementia caregivers to considering cancer screening cessation for older adults provides potential to reduce both patient burden and health care costs as well as family caregiver distress, while improving the overall quality of care ...

Down‑top strategy engineered large‑scale fluorographene/PBO nanofibers composite papers with excellent wave‑transparent performance and thermal conductivity

World Health Organization’s priorities shaped by its reliance on grants from donor organisations such as the Gates Foundation

Dr. Loren Miller presents oral late breaker at IDWeek 2025 of a first-of-its-kind clinical trial that shows efficacy of bacteriophage therapy for Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia

Disney researchers use encoded audio signals to provide 'second screen' experiences at most venues

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: