An embedded audio–visual tracking and speech purification system on a dual-core processor platform

Design of an embedded audio–visual tracking and speech purification system is described in this paper. The system is able to perform human face tracking, voice activity detection, sound source direction estimation, and speech enhancement in real-time. Estimating the sound source directions helps to initialize the human face tracking module when the target changes the direction. The implementation architecture is based on an embedded dual-core processor, Texas Instruments DM6446 platform (Davinci), which contains an ARM core and a DSP core. For speech signal processing, an eight-channel digital microphone array is developed and the associated pre-processing and interfacing features are designed using the Altera Cyclone II FPGA. All the experiments are conducted in a real environment and the experimental results show that this system can execute all the audition and vision functions in real-time.