Estimating Direction of Arrival with MATLAB

Stephen Cronin from the Robotics Association at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) joins Connell D'Souza from MathWorks to talk about using MATLAB^® to calculate the direction of arrival of an acoustic signal propagating underwater. 

RoboNation’s competition tasks are designed to replicate real-world challenges. For example, a common task that marine student competitions, viz., RoboBoat, RoboSub and RobotX, share is to detect the direction of arrival of an acoustic signal. This task is designed to replicate search and rescue operations that recover flight data recorders that have been lost in bodies of water. 

To calculate the direction of arrival of an acoustic signal, Stephen used Data Acquisition Toolbox™ to sample data from a supported data acquisition device and then filtered the signals to remove noise and reflections. Afterwards, a direction of arrival algorithm was used to obtain the bearing angle. Files used in this video can be found in this MATLAB file exchange entry.

A complete list of hardware supported with the Data Acquisition Toolbox is available.