Multi-Sound-Source Localization for Small Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles with a Self-Rotating Bi-Microphone Array

While vision-based localization techniques have been widely studied for small autonomous unmanned vehicles (SAUVs), sound-source localization capability has not been fully enabled for SAUVs. This paper presents two novel approaches for SAUVs to perform multi-sound-sources localization (MSSL) using only the interaural time difference (ITD) signal generated by a self-rotating bi-microphone array. The proposed two approaches are based on the DBSCAN and RANSAC algorithms, respectively, whose performances are tested and compared in both simulations and experiments. The results show that both approaches are capable of correctly identifying the number of sound sources along with their three-dimensional orientations in a reverberant environment.