5.4 Adding noise

Problem

To add noise from a robot fan or motor for simulation.

Solution

To apply the robot audition system to the real world, noise from the surrounding environment, the system itself, and/or a recording device must be considered. By recording these noises in advance and adding them to the original sounds, you can evaluate your system more realistically. Adding noise is simple; First, synthesize multichannel sounds using the recipe: Synthesizing multichannel sounds from impulse responses. Then, add the recorded noise. Matlab pseudo codes are shown below.

x=wavread('signal.wav');
y=wavread('noise.wav');
z=x+y;

where signal.wav denotes the original sound, noise.wav denotes the noise, and z is the simulated sound with additive noise.

Discussion

Additive noise is noise that is added to the original sound, for example robot fan noise.

See Also

To simulate multiplicative noise, see Synthesizing multichannel sound from the impulse response.