An Enhanced Binaural 3D Sound Localization Algorithm

Abstract

For sound localization methods to be useful in real-time scenarios, the processing power requirements must be low enough to allow real time processing of audio inputs. We propose a new binaural sound source localization technique based on using only two microphones placed inside the ear canal of a robot dummy head. The head is equipped with artificial ears and is mounted on a torso. In contrast to existing 3D sound source localization methods using microphone arrays, our novel method employs two microphone and is based on a simple correlation approach using a generic set of head related transfer functions (HRTFs). The proposed method is demonstrated through simulation and is further tested in a household environment. This set up proves to be very noise-tolerant and is able to localize sound sources in free space with high precision and low computational complexity