Biomimetic ears for a sensor agent robot to localize sound sources

Our current environment and architecture are mainly static even though our surrounding society is constantly changing. This is why the Biofication of Living Spaces field was created, to get more adaptive and suitable living spaces. On the other hand, human was naturally empowered with a lot of features responding to the environment. His/her 2 ears are powerful tools from which he/she can acquire a lot of information such as the source localization of a sound. Interaural (between both ears) time differences enable a lateral localization and this function can be technologically reproduced. However, the sound localization in the median plane of the head provided amongst others by our external ear called the pinna is yet to be imitated in robotics. The idea of this paper is to build some biomimetic ear prototypes and to analyze theirs influences on a transfer function called Interaural Transfer Function (ITF). Once achieved, attaching these prototyped ears to a sensor agent robot, we aim particularly at a sound localization in the median plane of the robot. However, we will have a quick look at the horizontal sound localization too. Finally, these "ears" on the sensor agent robot will be convenient to get a" much accurate and useful information as possible with only 2 microphones and to use this agent for biofication of living spaces issues.