Auditory and Visual Integration based Localization and Tracking of Multiple Moving Sounds in Daily-life Environments

This paper presents techniques that enable talker tracking for effective human-robot interaction. To track moving people in daily-life environments, localizing multiple moving sounds is necessary so that robots can locate talkers. However, the conventional method requires an array of microphones and impulse response data. Therefore, we propose a way to integrate a cross-power spectrum phase analysis (CSP) method and an expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. The CSP can localize sound sources using only two microphones and does not need impulse response data. Moreover, the EM algorithm increases the system´s effectiveness and allows it to cope with multiple sound sources. We confirmed that the proposed method performs better than the conventional method. In addition, we added a particle filter to the tracking process to produce a reliable tracking path and the particle filter is able to integrate audio-visual information effectively. Furthermore, the applied particle filter is able to track people while dealing with various noises that are even loud sounds in the daily-life environments.