Position identification by actively localizing spacial sound beacons

In this paper, we propose a method for robot self-position identification by active sound localization. This method can be used for autonomous security robots working in room environments. A system using an AIBO robot equipped with two microphones and a wireless network is constructed and used for position identification experiments. Differences in arrival time to the robot's microphones are used as localization cues. To overcome the ambiguity of front-back confusion, a three-head-position measurement method is proposed. The position of robot can be identified by the intersection of circles restricted using the azimuth differences among different sound beacon pairs. By localizing three or four loudspeakers as sound beacons positioned at known locations, the robot can identify its position with an average error of 7 cm in a 2.5 × 3.0m² working space in the horizontal plane. We propose adjusting the arrival time differences (ATDs) to reduce the errors caused when the sound beacons are high mounted. A robot navigation experiment was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed position-identification system.