The Tracking of a Moving Object by a Mobile Robot Following the Object’s Sound

The tracking of a moving object with a mobile robot has been implemented based on the detected sound from the moving object using a microphone array. The difference between the travel times of the sound source to each of the three microphones mounted to the robot has been used to calculate the distance and orientation of the sound source. The cross-correlations between the received signals have been used to detect the individual sound signal from the object and to calculate the time difference between two signals. This provides reliable and precise time differences among the sound signals arrived at the microphones compared to the conventional method. In order to determine the tracking direction to the sound source, Fuzzy rules have been applied; the results are used for real-time control of the mobile robot. The efficiency of the proposed algorithm has been demonstrated through real-world experiments and compared to the conventional approach.