Chapter 1 Unstructured Environmental Audio : Representation , Classification and Modeling

Unstructured audio is an important aspect in building systems that are capable of understanding their surrounding environment through the use of audio and other modalities of information, i.e. visual, sonar, global positioning, etc. Consider, for example, applications in robotic navigation, assistive robotics, and other mobile device-based services, where context aware processing is often desired. Human beings utilize both vision and hearing to navigate and respond to their surroundings, a capability still quite limited in machine processing. The first step toward achieving recognition of multi-modality is the ability to process unstructured audio and recognize audio scenes (or environments). abStract