A head orientation tracking system using binaural headset microphones is proposed. Unlike previous approaches, the proposed method does not require anchor sources, but relies on speech signals of the wearers of the binaural headsets. From the binaural microphone signals, time of arrival (TOA) and time difference of arrival (TDOA) estimates are obtained. The tracking is performed using a particle filter integrated with a maximum likelihood estimation function. In a case study, the proposed method is used to track the head orientations of three conferees in a meeting scenario. With an accuracy of about 10 degrees, the proposed method is shown to outperform a reference method which achieves an accuracy of about 35 degrees.

Authors: Gamper, Hannes; Tervo, Sakari; Lokki, Tapio
Affiliation: Aalto University School of Science, Aalto, Finland
AES Convention: 131 (October 2011) Paper Number: 8538
Publication Date: October 19, 2011
Subject: Headphone Playback

Click to purchase paper as a non-member or you can login as an AES member to see more options.

No AES members have commented on this paper yet.

Subscribe to this discussion

To be notified of new comments on this paper you can subscribe to this RSS feed. Forum users should login to see additional options.

Start a discussion!

If you would like to start a discussion about this paper and are an AES member then you can login here:
Username:
Password:

If you are not yet an AES member and have something important to say about this paper then we urge you to join the AES today and make your voice heard. You can join online today by clicking here.