Speaker localization in noisy environments using steered response voice power

Many devices, including smart TVs and humanoid robots, can be operated through speech interface. Since a user can interact with such a device at a distance, speech-operated devices must be able to process speech signals from a distance. Although many methods exist to localize speakers via sound source localization, it is very difficult to reliably find the location of a speaker in a noisy environment. In particular, conventional sound source localization methods only find the loudest sound source within a given area, and such a sound source may not necessarily be related to human speech. This can be problematic in real environments where loud noises frequently occur, and the performance of speech-based interfaces for a variety of devices could be negatively impacted as a result. In this paper, a new speaker localization method is proposed. It identifies the location associated with the maximum voice power from all candidate locations. The proposed method is tested under a variety of conditions using both simulation data and real data, and the results indicate that the performance of the proposed method is superior to that of a conventional algorithm for various types of noises¹.