CITATION.cff

cff-version: 1.2.0
title: >-
  Sound Source Tracking as A Heuristic for Frontier
  Exploration in Search and Rescue
message: >-
  This repository is a collection of the work performed by
  Francesco Marrato for his MASc in Electrical and Computer
  Engineering.
type: software
authors:
  - given-names: Francesco
    family-names: Marrato
    email: 15fram@queensu.ca
    name-particle: Francesco
    affiliation: Ingenuity Labs - Queens University
    orcid: 'https://orcid.org/0009-0007-6331-5754'
url: 'https://offroad.engineering.queensu.ca/'
abstract: >-
  This paper describes a system that integrates autonomous
  exploration agents for disasters scenarios with robots
  that have the ability to interpret their surroundings
  through sound. We present the development of an autonomous
  frontier exploration system that uses sound source
  tracking of human voices as a heuristic for search. Our
  system is capable of exploring previously unknown
  environments and locating a target sound source which
  emits human speech. We propose continuous and discrete
  approaches to sound source tracking and establish that
  measurements taken while the robot is stationary do not
  translate to measurable performance improvements. Our
  system was implemented on a Boston Dynamics Spot
  quadrupedal robot equipped with a four-microphone array.
  Field trials were conducted in a laboratory environment
  and in simulated disaster scenarios in both natural forest
  and urban environments. Across 64 trials, a success rate
  of 69 % and a success weighted by path length score of
  0.42 was achieved. This research stands to demonstrate
  that sound source tracking tuned for the human voice is a
  suited heuristic to bring autonomous search agents used in
  disaster scenarios closer in capability to the humans they
  assist.