Enhancing smart home environments: a novel pattern recognition approach to ambient acoustic event detection and localization

Introduction: Ambient acoustic detection and localization play a vital role in identifying events and their origins from acoustic data. This study aimed to establish a comprehensive framework for classifying activities in home environments to detect emergency events and transmit emergency signals. Localization enhances the detection of the acoustic event's location, thereby improving the effectiveness of emergency services, situational awareness, and response times. Methods: Acoustic data were collected from a home environment using six strategically placed microphones in a bedroom, kitchen, restroom, and corridor. A total of 512 audio samples were recorded from 11 activities. Background noise was eliminated using a filtering technique. State-of-the-art features were extracted from the time domain, frequency domain, time frequency domain, and cepstral domain to develop efficient detection and localization frameworks. Random forest and linear discriminant analysis classifiers were employed for event detection, while the estimation signal parameters through rational-in-variance techniques (ESPRIT) algorithm was used for sound source localization. Results: The study achieved high detection accuracy, with random forest and linear discriminant analysis classifiers attaining 95% and 87%, respectively, for event detection. For sound source localization, the proposed framework demonstrated significant performance, with an error rate of 3.61, a mean squared error (MSE) of 14.98, and a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 3.87. Discussion: The integration of detection and localization models facilitated the identification of emergency activities and the transmission of notifications via electronic mail. The results highlight the potential of the proposed methodology to develop a real-time emergency alert system for domestic environments.