Auditory Occupancy Grids with a Mobile Robot

This paper presents the use of auditory occupancy grids (AOGs) for mapping of a mobile robot’s acoustic environment. An AOG is a probabilistic map of sound source locations built from multiple measurements using techniques from both probabilistic robotics and sound localization. The mapping is simulated, tested for ro-bustness, and then successfully implemented on a three-microphone mobile robot with four sound sources. Using the robot’s inherent advantage of mobility, the AOG cor-rectly locates the sound sources from only nine measure-ments. The resulting map is then used to intelligently po-sition the robot within the environment and to maintain auditory contact with a moving target