Acoustic head orientation estimation applied to powered wheelchair control

In this paper, we propose an acoustic-based head orientation estimation method using a microphone array mounted on a wheelchair, and apply it to a novel interface for controlling a powered wheelchair. The proposed interface does not require disabled people to wear any microphones or utter recognizable voice commands. By mounting the microphone array system on the wheelchair, our system can easily distinguish user utterances from other voices without using a speaker identification technique. The proposed interface is also robust to interference from surrounding noise. From the experimental results, we confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.