Acoustic-based room discrimination for the navigation of autonomous mobile robots

This work investigates the possibility of using audible broadband acoustic signals for the navigation of autonomous mobile robots in unprepared, unknown, silent, static, indoor environments. To this day, audible sound signals are not used for the navigation of autonomous mobile robots. Nonetheless, they are the second best information source for the blind (next to tactile signals) for navigating through indoor environments. Descriptive psychological experiments show that humans have astounding abilities in differentiating their relative position to walls and sensing the existence of even small objects like metal discs not bigger than a plate, solely based on acoustic information.