Tobias Rodemann, Frank Joublin, Christian Goerick, "Filtering environmental sounds using basic audio cues in robot audition", Proceedings of International Conference on Advanced Robotics (ICAR) 2009, 2009.

In this article we present an approach for separating robot-directed speech from environmental sounds for applications in robot audition under high noise conditions. We introduce a new framework for audio processing that combines feature extraction and a grouping process to form what we call audio proto objects. These proto objects combine an arbitrary number of audio features in a compact representation that allows a filtering of environmental sounds using relatively simple audio cues like signal energy or segment length. We demonstrate that our system can be a first step towards a selective and adaptive auditory attention in real-world robotics scenarios.