Proceedings of the LOCATA Challenge Workshop -- a satellite event of IWAENC 2018

TL;DR

This paper discusses the LOCATA Challenge, which benchmarks state-of-the-art acoustic source localization and tracking algorithms across various scenarios using open-access data, to advance research in audio signal processing.

Contribution

It introduces a standardized benchmarking framework for evaluating localization and tracking algorithms in diverse acoustic environments.

Findings

Benchmarking results of multiple algorithms on open data

Identification of strengths and weaknesses of current methods

Guidelines for future research directions in source localization

Abstract

Algorithms for acoustic source localization and tracking provide estimates of the positional information about active sound sources in acoustic environments and are essential for a wide range of applications such as personal assistants, smart homes, tele-conferencing systems, hearing aids, or autonomous systems. The aim of the IEEE-AASP Challenge on sound source localization and tracking (LOCATA) was to objectively benchmark state-of-the-art localization and tracking algorithms using an open-access data corpus of recordings for scenarios typically encountered in audio and acoustic signal processing applications. The challenge tasks ranged from the localization of a single source with a static microphone array to the tracking of multiple moving sources with a moving microphone array.