Integrated displacement tracking and sound localization

An algorithm is proposed for the robust localization of a vehicle using both displacement tracking and sound localization. The displacement tracking is performed by optical encoders that enable the turn angle and the movement distance of the vehicle to be estimated. The sound localization utilizes a speaker mounted on the vehicle and an array of 24 microphones deployed in the environment. The two modalities are integrated by modeling the displacement tracking uncertainty by a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) and combining it with the probability distribution obtained from the sound localization system. It is shown that the proposed integrated system results in an average localization error (at best 11 cm) that is better than either modality alone.