Visual Perception Substitution by the Auditory Sense

This paper presents the methodology to develop a sensory substitution system. We deal with the absence of visual inputs in humans, and we substitute the blindness by the auditory sense. Visual to auditory substitution involves delivering information about the visual world using auditory signals. The system allows the transformation of digital images captured from a web cam into sound patterns, using a novel scanning method from the center to the left and right side of the image. We define a robust correspondence between the image features and the sound features. The results provided by the system seems high enough to address many practical situations that normally require the sense of sight. Navigation experiments with blind people, have demonstrated the ability of the system to offer a permanent sensory substitution device in the future.