Discriminant Analysis of Voice Commands in the Presence of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

The aim of this study was to perform discriminant analysis of voice commands in the presence of an unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with four rotating propellers, as well as to obtain background sound levels and speech intelligibility. The measurements were taken in laboratory conditions in the absence of the unmanned aerial vehicle and the presence of the unmanned aerial vehicle. Discriminant analysis of speech commands (left, right, up, down, forward, backward, start, and stop) was performed based on mel-frequency cepstral coefficients. Ten male speakers took part in this experiment. The unmanned aerial vehicle hovered at a height of 1.8 m during the recordings at a distance of 2 m from the speaker and 0.3 m above the measuring equipment. Discriminant analysis based on mel-frequency cepstral coefficients showed promising classification of speech commands equal to 76.2% for male speakers. Evaluated speech intelligibility during recordings and obtained sound levels in the presence of the unmanned aerial vehicle during recordings did not exclude verbal communication with the unmanned aerial vehicle for male speakers.