A Robotic Auditory System that Interacts with Musical Sounds and Human Voices

Voice and sounds are the primary media employed for human communication. Humans are able to exchange information smoothly using voice under different situations, such as a noisy environment and in the presence of multiple speakers. We are surrounded by various sounds, and yet are able to detect the location of a sound source in 3D space, extract a particular sound from a mixture of sounds, and recognize the source of a specific sound. Also, music is composed of various sounds generated by musical instruments, and directly affects our emotions and feelings. This paper introduces real-time detection and identification of a particular sound among plural sound sources using a microphone array based on the location of a speaker and the tonal characteristics. The technique will also be applied to an adaptive auditory system of a robotic arm, which interacts with humans.