  The hearing sense on a mobile robot is important because it is
omnidirectional and it does not require direct line-of-sight with the sound
source. Such capabilities can nicely complement vision to help localize a
person or an interesting event in the environment. To do so the robot auditory
system must be able to work in noisy, unknown and diverse environmental
conditions. In this paper we present a robust sound source localization method
in three-dimensional space using an array of 8 microphones. The method is based
on time delay of arrival estimation. Results show that a mobile robot can
localize in real time different types of sound sources over a range of 3 meters
and with a precision of 3 degrees.
