Ikutaka Terakura

Papers

Total Citations

137

H-Index

About

Ikutaka Terakura is a robotics researcher whose work has made significant contributions to the field of acoustic perception and autonomous mobile robot navigation. His research centers on sound source localization — the computational challenge of enabling machines to determine the direction of sounds in real-world environments — and its practical integration into robotic systems. Terakura's most influential contribution is his development of a model-based sound localization system, drawing inspiration from the human auditory system's precedence effect to address the persistent challenges of echoes and reverberation in real environments. This foundational work, published in 1999, has garnered 113 citations and remains a key reference in the field. Building on this, his 2002 study demonstrated a fully functional mobile robot combining real-time sound localization with sonar-based obstacle detection, showcasing a robust, multi-sensory approach to autonomous navigation. His earlier 1994 work laid the groundwork for this trajectory, presenting one of the first mobile robots capable of estimating sound source azimuth using a tri-microphone array and obstacle avoidance behavior. Across his career, Terakura has helped bridge human auditory modeling and practical robotics, offering researchers a compelling framework for building acoustically aware autonomous systems.