Development of a Hand-held 3D Scanning Acoustic Camera

Traditionally, acoustic cameras have used a fixed 2D near-field scanning plane for localising noise sources. This has been shown to cause errors in captured data and restricts acoustic observation to a fixed viewing position. With the recent popularisation of consumer 3D depth cameras and open source 3D reconstruction algorithms, researchers have begun investigating their utility in generating 3D near-field evaluation surfaces to increase beamforming accuracy. This paper presents the design and development of a portable hand held 3D scanning microphone array based on comprehensive simulations. Steps taken to improve the camera towards real-time construction of 3D acoustic models are also discussed.