Adaptive noise cancellation for improving voice recognition

The purpose of this paper is improvement of voice recognition in noisy device itself. The performance of voice recognition deteriorates in noisy device because it depends on the level of signal to noise. Normally, noise reduction techniques are applied in postprocessing with recorded voice signal with noise. But, it is effective when the level of voice is higher than those of noise. The condition is not satisfied in heavy noisy devices such as robot vacuum cleaner and so on. Under this background, a method of adaptive noise cancellation is proposed for improving voice recognition in noisy device itself. As a case study, a robot vacuum cleaner is investigated with respect to what the main noise source is and how the noise propagates. An adaptive noise cancellation is applied with the placement of reference sensors and development of adaptive algorithm. Numerical simulation shows that the proposed scheme has a potential application.