Auditory Perspective Taking

Abstract

Effective communication with a mobile robot using speech is a difficult problem even when you can control the auditory scene. Robot self-noise or ego noise, echoes and reverberation, and human interference are all common sources of decreased intelligibility. Moreover, in real-world settings, these problems are routinely aggravated by a variety of sources of background noise. Military scenarios can be punctuated by high decibel noise from materiel and weaponry that would easily overwhelm a robot's normal speaking volume. Moreover, in nonmilitary settings, fans, computers, alarms, and transportation noise can cause enough interference to make a traditional speech interface unusable. This work presents and evaluates a prototype robotic interface that uses perspective taking to estimate the effectiveness of its own speech presentation and takes steps to improve intelligibility for human listeners.