Mobile robot and sound localization

Abstract

This paper describes a mobile robot equipped with a real time sound localization system as well as a sonar system for obstacle detection. The sound localization method is based on a model of the precedence effect of the human auditory system to cope with echoes and reverberations. The sound localization and robot navigation experiments were conducted. The results show that the robot is capable of localizing sounding objects in a reverberant environment and approaching the objects without collisions, even when the objects were behind obstacles. Environment flexibility and error robustness of the system were discussed as well.