Vertical Localization by Multipath Analysis in Artificial Human Ears for Robots

Abstract

Sound Localization in robots especially in the vertical plane are either by using microphones array or using HRTF. While HRTF uses the characteristic of human ears that distort a sound frequency. We propose the multipath analysis to localize the sound source in a vertical plane. The multipath is the result of sound reflected in the pinna of the human ear before coming into the inner ear. The analysis of the sound multiple frequencies shown that the polynomial model of 1500 Hz has the best result in vertical plane sound localization. The angular error of this model is 8.407 and RMSE is 10.308. Similar results can also be seen from other frequency models that were built in this study. Those results showed that we can localize the sound in the vertical plane using multipath analysis that was recorded using only 1 microphone equipped with the artificial ear.