Development, deployment and applications of robot audition open source software HARK

Robot audition is a research field that focuses on developing technologies so that robots can hear sound through their own ears (microphones). By compiling robot audition studies performed over more than 10 years, open source software for research purposes called HARK (Honda Research Institute Japan Audition for Robots with Kyoto University) was released to the public in 2008. HARK is updated every year, and free tutorials are often held for its promotion. In this paper, the major functions of HARK – such as sound source localization, sound source separation, and automatic speech recognition – are explained. In order to promote HARK, HARK-Embedded for embedding purposes and HARK-SaaS used as Software as a Service (SaaS) have been actively studied and developed in recent years; these technologies are also described in the paper. In addition, applications of HARK are introduced as case studies.