Binaural audition, i.e. hearing capability with a pair of ears in human and animals as well as with a pair of microphones for machines, is a rudimental function for perception and communication. To make robots, either physical or virtual, be in symbiosis with people, they must be endowed with the ability to localize, separate and process sounds under noisy environments or from a mixture of sounds. This symposium focuses on theoretical and pragmatical aspects of binaural audition. It is organized in the framework of the French-Japanese BINAAHR (BINaural Active Audition for Humanoid Robots) project, jointly funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). A two-day series of papers will be presented by members of the BINAAHR consortium, as well as from invited external lecturers.  A full-day tutorial on the open-source robot audition ``HARK´´ library (http://winnie.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp/HARK/) will conclude the event.

1. • Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics, Paris, France (ISIR)
   

2. • Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of Systems, Toulouse, France (LAAS-CNRS)

Machine listening, or binaural active audition are first considered in the following manner:

• Generic design of binaural sensors

• Active binaural sound source localization

• Voice detection

The symposium secondly focuses on theoretical approaches to human binaural perception and on their outcomes in robotics. Theoretical contributions from cognitive psychology which put forward the active and exploratory nature of perception are outlined, as well as some artificial perception strategies which hypothesize the interweave of perception and action. The addressed topics are:

• Psychology of Perception in human hearing

• Geometric space perception based on the Sensorimotor Contingencies theory

1. • Audio-visual integration and Redundancy reduction based on Psychology of Perception based approaches

For organization issues, participants should register by mail before February 15th 2012 (binaarh@isir.upmc.fr). In order to encourage scientific exchanges in the field of binaural audition and in connected areas, the registration is free of charge.

Sylvain Argentieri (Université Pierre and Marie Curie – ISIR)

Alain de Cheveigné (École Normale Supérieure – LPP)

Patrick Danès (Université de Toulouse – LAAS-CNRS)

Makoto Kumon (Kumamoto University)

Kazuhiro Nakadai (Honda Research Institute Japan, Co. Ltd.)

Hiroshi G. Okuno (Kyoto University)

Sylvain Argentieri (Université Pierre and Marie Curie – ISIR)

Bruno Gas (Université Pierre and Marie Curie – ISIR)

Jean-Luc Zarader (Université Pierre and Marie Curie – ISIR)