Sound source localization through shape reconfiguration in a snake robot

This paper describes a snake robot system that uses sound source localization. We show in this paper as to how we can localize a sound source in 3D and solve the classic forward backward problem in sound source localization using minimum number of audio sensors by using the multiple degrees of freedom of the snake robot. We describe the hardware and software architecture of the robot and show the results of several sound tracking experiments we did with our snake robot. We also present biologically inspired sound tracking behavior in different postures of a biological snake robot as "Digital Snake Charming"

An Audio-visual Solution to Sound Source Localization and Tracking with Applications to HRI

Robot audition is an emerging and growing branch in the robotic community and is necessary for a natural Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). In this paper, we propose a framework that integrates advances from Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM), bearing-only target tracking, and robot audition techniques into a unifed system for sound source identification, localization, and tracking. In indoors, acoustic observations are often highly noisy and corrupted due to reverberations, the robot ego-motion and background noise, and possible discontinuous nature of them. Therefore, in everyday interaction scenarios, the system requires accommodating for outliers, robust data association, and appropriate management of the landmarks, i.e. sound sources. We solve the robot self-localization and environment representation problems using an RGB-D SLAM algorithm, and sound source localization and tracking using recursive Bayesian estimation in the form of the extended Kalman Filter with unknown data associations and an unknown number of landmarks. The experimental results show that the proposed system performs well in the medium-sized cluttered indoor environment

ODAS: Open embeddeD Audition System

Artificial audition aims at providing hearing capabilities to machines, computers and robots. Existing frameworks in robot audition offer interesting sound source localization, tracking and separation performance, but involve a significant amount of computations that limit their use on robots with embedded computing capabilities. This paper presents ODAS, the Open embeddeD Audition System framework, which includes strategies to reduce the computational load and perform robot audition tasks on low-cost embedded computing systems. It presents key features of ODAS, along with cases illustrating its uses in different robots and artificial audition applications

Incorporation of acoustic sensors in the regulation of a mobile robot

This article introduces the incorporation of acoustic sensors for the localization of a mobile robot. The robot is considered as a sound source and its position is located applying a Time Delay of Arrival (TDOA) method. Since the accuracy of this method varies with the microphone array, a navigation acoustic map that indicates the location errors is built. This map also provides the robot with navigation trajectories point-to-point and the control is capable to drive the robot through these trajectories to a desired configuration. The proposed localization method is thoroughly tested using both a 900 Hz square signal and the natural sound of the robot, which is driven near the desired point with an average error of 0:067 m.This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Advanced Robotics on 01/01/2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01691864.2019.1573703.”Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Reverberant Sound Localization with a Robot Head Based on Direct-Path Relative Transfer Function

International audienceThis paper addresses the problem of sound-source localization (SSL) with a robot head, which remains a challenge in real-world environments. In particular we are interested in locating speech sources, as they are of high interest for human-robot interaction. The microphone-pair response corresponding to the direct-path sound propagation is a function of the source direction. In practice, this response is contaminated by noise and reverberations. The direct-path relative transfer function (DP-RTF) is defined as the ratio between the direct-path acoustic transfer function (ATF) of the two microphones, and it is an important feature for SSL. We propose a method to estimate the DP-RTF from noisy and reverberant signals in the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) domain. First, the convolutive transfer function (CTF) approximation is adopted to accurately represent the impulse response of the microphone array, and the first coefficient of the CTF is mainly composed of the direct-path ATF. At each frequency, the frame-wise speech auto-and cross-power spectral density (PSD) are obtained by spectral subtraction. Then a set of linear equations is constructed by the speech auto-and cross-PSD of multiple frames, in which the DP-RTF is an unknown variable, and is estimated by solving the equations. Finally, the estimated DP-RTFs are concatenated across frequencies and used as a feature vector for SSL. Experiments with a robot, placed in various reverberant environments, show that the proposed method outperforms two state-of-the-art methods

A Model-Driven Engineering Approach for ROS using Ontological Semantics

This paper presents a novel ontology-driven software engineering approach for the development of industrial robotics control software. It introduces the ReApp architecture that synthesizes model-driven engineering with semantic technologies to facilitate the development and reuse of ROS-based components and applications. In ReApp, we show how different ontological classification systems for hardware, software, and capabilities help developers in discovering suitable software components for their tasks and in applying them correctly. The proposed model-driven tooling enables developers to work at higher abstraction levels and fosters automatic code generation. It is underpinned by ontologies to minimize discontinuities in the development workflow, with an integrated development environment presenting a seamless interface to the user. First results show the viability and synergy of the selected approach when searching for or developing software with reuse in mind.Comment: Presented at DSLRob 2015 (arXiv:1601.00877), Stefan Zander, Georg Heppner, Georg Neugschwandtner, Ramez Awad, Marc Essinger and Nadia Ahmed: A Model-Driven Engineering Approach for ROS using Ontological Semantic