Sound source tracking and obstacle avoidance for a mobile robot

Sound source tracking is an important function for autonomous robots, because sound is omni-directional and independent of light. This paper presents a new approach to sound source tracking for mobile robots using auditory sensors. We consider a general type of two-wheeled mobile robot that has wide industrial applications. Because obstacle avoidance is also an indispensable function for autonomous mobile robots, the robot is equipped with distance sensors to detect obstacles in real time. To deal with the nonholonomic constraint of the robot and combine information from the auditory and distance sensors, we propose a model reference control approach in which the robot follows a desired trajectory generated by a reference model. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by experiments in which the robot is expected to approach a sound source while avoiding the obstacles.