Acoustic Head Orientation Estimation Applied to Powered Wheelchair Control

Akira Sasou

2nd International ICST Conference on Robot Communication and Coordination

Research Article

Acoustic Head Orientation Estimation Applied to Powered Wheelchair Control

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@INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/ICST.ROBOCOMM2009.5815,
    author={Akira Sasou},
    title={Acoustic Head Orientation Estimation Applied to Powered Wheelchair Control},
    proceedings={2nd International ICST Conference on Robot Communication and Coordination},
    proceedings_a={ROBOCOMM},
    year={2009},
    month={5},
    keywords={Terms--- wheelchair microphone array noise robust head orientation sound source localization},
    doi={10.4108/ICST.ROBOCOMM2009.5815}
}

Akira Sasou
Year: 2009
Acoustic Head Orientation Estimation Applied to Powered Wheelchair Control
ROBOCOMM
ICST
DOI: 10.4108/ICST.ROBOCOMM2009.5815

Akira Sasou¹^,*

1: National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, AIST Central #2, 1-1-1 Umezono Tsukuba Ibaraki Japan, 305-8568

*Contact email: a-sasou@aist.go.jp

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an acoustic-based head orientation estimation method using a microphone array mounted on a wheelchair, and apply it to a novel interface for controlling a powered wheelchair. The proposed interface does not require disabled people to wear any microphones or utter recognizable voice commands. By mounting the microphone array system on the wheelchair, our system can easily distinguish user utterances from other voices without using a speaker identification technique. The proposed interface is also robust to interference from surrounding noise. From the experimental results, we confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

Keywords: Terms— wheelchair microphone array noise robust head orientation sound source localization

Published: 2009-05-19
Modified: 2010-05-16

: http://dx.doi.org/10.4108/ICST.ROBOCOMM2009.5815