Progress Report 2:

I haven't the progress report 1, as we change out project title and scope after the comments receive during  the presentations which was done by me , and our previous topic was to build a Intelligent Home Environment for Domestic Energy Management.

This project had been a real mess for me, I have no prior knowledge regarding PIC programing, Matlab or any other simulation. Not only me other 3 members also has less knowledge on this. As there was no one to take up the challenge I accepted to do MATLAB simulation part.
Bythe way I have collected several papers published.And still reading them.Will soon update with the links once I go through them.

One guy has made a Opamp, It amplifiers perfectly, but when I ask the gain and the maximum peak-peak voltage of the out put, he says why do we need that? How on earth I am going to explain that we need quantitative data, rather than quality. He is hard to work with, but have to admit he has some knowledge.


Application of Acoustic Sound localization 

1. Estimation  the point of sound source  (e.g:-Military Applications)
2.Separation of signals from multiple sources
3.Teleconferencing Voice control.
4.Robotic navigation.


Project Objectives  

1.Localize an instantaneous Sound in a obstacle  free room
2.Communicate the location co-ordinates with a Robot
3.Navigating the robot


Approaches 

1. Time Domain 
2. Frequency Domain 

Matlab Code for Cross Correlation  

Methodology 

1. Selecting sound source with Fix Amplitude and Frequency   

2.The  sound  spread  from  the  sound  source  is captured  by  four  microphones. 

3.Isolate the frequency using filters. 

4.Then  the signals are amplified using pre amplifier circuits. 

5.Input  signal  is processed  & calculate the  amplitude  and  time  difference values using microcontroller and sent to PC.  

Data Acquisition 
• We used two Condenser mics and connected those into same laptop
• Since one laptop is having one mic input We  had to use USB Sound Card.
• We had to check whether the both mics are working simultaneously.
• It worked.

Problems Faced in Localizing 

• Vibration & Noise effects 

• Equipment  errors  &  human  errors. 

• Reflection of Sound 

• If height of the sound Source vary 

• Microphones used were not  identical 

 This was some of the content that we do for the second progress review.

Project Scope

Take a object free room,A mobile robot must localize a sound source and navigate to that location.

Methodology:

Use a 2 mic arrays consisting of 2 mics  in one array. And localize the location using Matlab.
The method planned to use was TDOA (Time Delay Of Arrival) of the sound waves.

Then the location is sent to a mobile robot through a wireless communication, By using a predefined grid on the roomrobot will navigate to the location using wheel encorder.

Obstacle  :  Noise of the room, robot must trigger only for a particular sound source.
Solution  :  Use a band pass filter and remove all unwanted noises.

Obstacle  :  Sound  attenuation
Solution   :  As we consider a indoor environment, its few meters and sound will travel with negligible
                  attenuation

Obstacles  : Sound Reflections from wall
Solution    : The delay occurs from the sounds reflected is very large compared to TDOA between 2
                   mics, so we can program to ignore them.