US Patent Issued to Waymo on June 30 for "Spatial audio for wayfinding" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,669,344, issued on June 30, was assigned to Waymo LLC (Mountain View, Calif.).

"Spatial audio for wayfinding" was invented by Kevin Malta (San Francisco) and Jonathan Willing (Mountain View, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The technology employs spatial audio information to enhance wayfinding for pickup, drop-off and in-vehicle situations. The spatial information has a directional component, and a sense of distance can also be incorporated into the audio information. Audio cues or other spatial information is provided via headphones worn by a user. The spatial audio gives the user direction information, which can help locate the ve...