Using sound reflections to detect moving entities out of the field of view

Abstract

This paper presents a method for detecting moving entities that are in the robot's path but not in the field of view of sensors like laser scanners, cameras or ultrasonic sensors. The proposed system makes use of passive acoustic localization methods which receive information from occluded regions (at intersections or corners) because of the multipath nature of sound propagation. Contrary to the conventional sensors, this method does not require line of sight. In particular, specular reflections in the environment make it possible to detect moving entities that emit sound such as a walking person or a rolling cart. This idea was exploited for safe navigation of a mobile platform at intersections. The passive acoustic localization output is combined with a 3D geometric map of the environment that is precise enough to estimate sound propagation and reflection using ray casting methods. This gives the robot the ability to detect a moving entity out of the field of view of the sensors that require line of sight. Then the robot is able to recalculate its path and waits until the detected entity is out of its path so that it is safe to move to its destination. To illustrate the performance of the proposed method, a comparison of the robot's navigation with and without the audio sensing is provided for several intersection scenarios.