Audio alerts in physical environments

摘要

Audio alerts are provided in an environment such as a house (10) in respect of categorized events to be reported. These events are, for example, the receipt of e-mails and voice mails. To this end, the presence of a person entering or leaving a space (11) of the environment is detected (12) and a processing system (13) makes a determination of what categories of reportable events have occurred. Each possible event category has a corresponding audio signature and the signatures of the event categories that have occurred are now played (14) within the hearing of the person detected, either simultaneously or sequentially.