Optimal Trajectory Control for Capturing a Mobile Sound Source by a Mobile Robot

Abstract

This paper presents a novel trajectory planning optimization process for a mobile robot to capture a mobile sound source (MSS) efficiently. The sound source can be an arbitrary object for the mobile robot to follow, such as a human being. The mobile robot is equipped with a microphone array so that it can obtain the location and direction of the MSS. During the capturing process, the location and direction of the MSS need to be known in advance so that an optimal path for capturing the sound source can be generated based upon a single or a double curvature path. Also a path predictive algorithm is used to estimate the moving path of the sound source. The conventional Kalman filter is used to realize an efficient prediction process for the mobile robot to capture the sound source quickly and accurately. The validity of the proposed algorithm has been demonstrated through its application in real experiments.