Perceiving the World With Sound

Abstract

Robot perception is the ability of a robotic platform to perceive its environment by the means of sensor inputs, e.g., laser, IMU, motor encoders, and so on. Much like humans, robots are not limited to perceiving their environment through vision-based sensors, e.g., cameras. Robot perception, through the scope of this chapter, encompasses acoustic signal processing techniques to locate the presence of a sound source, e.g., human speaker, within an environment for human-robot interaction (HRI), that has gained great interest within scientific community. This chapter will serve as an introduction to acoustic signal processing within robotics, starting with passive acoustic localization and building up to contemporary active sensing methods, such as the usage of neural networks and spatial map generation. The origins of active acoustic localization, which finds its roots in biomimetics, are also discussed.