Algorithms and architectures for acoustic localization based on microphone array in service robotics

This paper describes an experimental mobile robot with acoustic source localization capabilities for surveillance and transportation tasks in indoor environments. The location of a speaking operator is detected via a microphone array based algorithm; localization information are passed to a navigation module which sets up a navigation mission using knowledge of the environment map. The system has been developed using a distributed architecture with TCP/IP message passing. We describe the hardware and software architectures, as well as the algorithms. Experimental results describing the system performance in localization tasks are reported.