Fully-Online Always-Adaptation of Transfer Functions and Its Application to Sound Source Localization and Separation

Abstract

This paper addresses fully-online always-adaptation of a transfer function for robot audition systems based on microphone array processing. The transfer function represents signal propagation characteristics between a microphone and a sound source, which provides essential information for real-world scene analysis, such as sound source localization and separation for robots. Although it is commonly defined as a stationary function, it should be considered together with room acoustics and their environmental changes for practical use, that is, it should be defined as a dynamically-changing function. To fulfill this requirement, we propose a fully-online always-adaptation method for a transfer function, by continuously estimating the transfer function from the observed signals in a passive manner, while performing sound source localization and separation. The proposed method was implemented on open source robot audition software HARK as modules which works online. These modules are applied to sound source localization and separation which are primary functions in robot audition. Experimental results showed that the proposed method successfully adapted to an office environment and improved the performance of sound source localization and separation at a close level to the transfer function recorded in the room.