  Vision to audition substitution devices are designed to convey visual
information through auditory input. The acceptance of such systems depends
heavily on their ease of use, training time, reliability and on the amount of
coverage of online auditory perception of current auditory scenes. Existing
devices typically require extensive training time or complex and
computationally demanding technology. The purpose of this work is to
investigate the learning curve for a vision to audition substitution system
that provides simple location features. Forty-two blindfolded users
participated in experiments involving location and navigation tasks.
Participants had no prior experience with the system. For the location task,
participants had to locate 3 objects on a table after a short familiarisation
period (10 minutes). Then once they understood the manipulation of the device,
they proceeded to the navigation task: participants had to walk through a large
corridor without colliding with obstacles randomly placed on the floor.
Participants were asked to repeat the task 5 times. In the end of the
experiment, each participant had to fill out a questionnaire to provide
feedback. They were able to perform localisation and navigation effectively
after a short training time with an average of 10 minutes. Their navigation
skills greatly improved across the trials.
