The Hough Transform for Binaural Source Localization

We introduce a new technique for the blind localization of several sound sources from two binaural signals. First, the binaural signals are organized as two-dimensional data where each sound source appears as a line. Second, the Hough transform is used to recognize these lines. The slopes of the lines give the mixing coefficients and directions of arrival (azimuths). Two variants of our technique are proposed, based on only one of the interaural level or time differences, respectively. Although a rapid comparison to a well-known localization method as well as promising results are shown, they are clearly not exhaustive and this paper should rather be regarded as a feasibility demonstration of the new technique.