title: Auditory perspective taking.
abstract: Effective communication with a mobile robot using speech is a difficult problem even when you can control the auditory scene. Robot self-noise or ego noise, echoes and reverberation, and human interference are all common sources of decreased intelligibility. Moreover, in real-world settings, these problems are routinely aggravated by a variety of sources of background noise. Military scenarios can be punctuated by high decibel noise from materiel and weaponry that would easily overwhelm a robot's normal speaking volume. Moreover, in nonmilitary settings, fans, computers, alarms, and transportation noise can cause enough interference to make a traditional speech interface unusable. This work presents and evaluates a prototype robotic interface that uses perspective taking to estimate the effectiveness of its own speech presentation and takes steps to improve intelligibility for human listeners.
authors.affiliation: U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC 20375, USA. eric.martinson.ctr@nrl.navy.mil
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Martinson
authors.forename: Derek
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brock
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001307:Auditory Perception; D032701:Biomimetics / Q000379:methods; D003142:Communication; D006801:Humans; D008328:Man-Machine Systems; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods; D012371:Robotics / Q000379:methods*; D013018:Sound Spectrography / Q000379:methods*; D013068:Speech Production Measurement / Q000379:methods*