In this paper, we introduce a novel acoustic source localization in a three-dimensional (3D) space, based on a direction estimation technique. Assuming an acoustic source at a distance from adjacent microphones, its waves spread in a planar form called a planar wavefront. In our system, the directions and steering angles between the acoustic source and the microphone array are estimated based on a planar wavefront model using a delay and sum beamforming (DSBF) system and an array of two-dimensional (2D) microelectromechanical system (MEMS) microphones. The proposed system is designed with parallel processing hardware for real-time performance and implemented using a cost-effective field programmable gate array (FPGA) and a micro control unit (MCU). As shown in the experimental results, the localization errors of the proposed system were less than 3 cm when an impulsive acoustic source was generated over 1 m away from the microphone array, which is comparable to a position-based system with reduced computational complexity. On the basis of the high accuracy and real-time performance of localizing an impulsive acoustic source, such as striking a ball, the proposed system can be applied to screen-based sports simulation.
Real-time acoustic source localization in noisy environments for human-robot multimodal interaction
