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Nakadai Lab
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The lab builds robots that tell sounds apart and grasp what is going on around them.
AboutAbout the lab
Telling sounds apart, like Prince Shotoku.
The Nakadai Lab studies technology that lets robots listen to sounds and understand their surrounding environment.
To work in real places where noise and reverberation vary greatly, the lab combines sound source localization, sound source separation, and speech recognition.
The technology developed so far has been released to the public as HARK, open-source software for robot audition.
The lab handles not only sound but also video and other data, and is extending its work to interaction with people, observation of wild birds, and disaster rescue.
Key terms
- Robot audition
- The field of technology that enables a robot to distinguish and understand surrounding sounds using its own microphones
- Sound source separation
- Extracting only the target sound from a mixture of many sounds
- Microphone array
- A set of multiple microphones placed side by side so that the direction a sound comes from can also be determined
NewsLab news
A student received the Young Presenter Award at the Annual Conference of the Robotics Society of Japan
A doctoral student received the Judges' Award at BioDCASE 2026 Task 1
A Project Assistant Professor and colleagues received the Excellent Research Group Award from the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence
Professor Nakadai received the Achievement Award from the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence
A presentation by Professor Nakadai and colleagues received the Excellent Presentation Award at SI2025 of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers
ResearchResearch themes
Since its founding in 2006, the lab has focused on research in robot audition and environment understanding. In April 2024, it changed its name to the "Robotics and AI Laboratory", and in addition to its existing technologies, it now works on next-generation technologies for communication and interaction, conducting research in AI and robotics that can contribute to human society.
*Illustrative imageRobot Audition and Acoustic Environment Understanding
This theme deals with how to make robots understand the kind of acoustic environment that people normally hear. By combining the component technologies of sound source localization, extraction of target sounds, and recognition of the extracted sounds, the lab develops technology that can distinguish each person's voice even when several people speak at the same time.
*Illustrative imageCommunication and Interaction
The lab has applied robot audition technology to interaction between people and robots. In recent years, it has put particular effort into diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I), working on sign language processing to close the gap between deaf or hard-of-hearing people and hearing people, and on echolocation, which senses the shape of the surroundings from reflected sound.
*Illustrative imageAnimal Ecology and Acoustic Scene Understanding
Using multiple microphone arrays, the lab estimates the three-dimensional positions of sound sources over a wide outdoor area to locate wild birds. It also works on deep learning methods that can learn from a small amount of labeled data to identify species from their songs, and on building classifiers that can identify birds, whales, and frogs together.
*Illustrative imageDisaster Rescue
This research mounts a microphone array on a drone, suppresses the drone's own noise and wind noise, and detects sounds such as the voices of people who need rescue. In collaboration with Waseda University and Kumamoto University, the lab has realized an interface for "sound visualization" that overlays the estimated three-dimensional positions of sound sources on a map.
MembersFaculty
The members of the Nakadai Lab are faculty, doctoral, master's, and undergraduate students, research students, exchange students, and administrative assistants.As of 2026
- ProfessorKazuhiro NakadaiPublications ↗
VoicesStudent voices
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “RF Fully Anechoic Room 2” Mihaelawojcik / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Robot Audition and Acoustic Environment Understanding: “Acoustic Mirrors” Teseum / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Communication and Interaction: “Two chairs and a table with drinks and snacks in a bright room with large windows” Shixart1985 / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Animal Ecology and Acoustic Scene Understanding: “Saltmarsh sparrow singing ( )” U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region / Public domain (cropped)
- Disaster Rescue: “Autonomous Quadcopter Project 01” Mais Jamal, Youshaa Murhij, Zain Alabiden Ali / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (塚越研究室): “Amoeba proteus locomotive form” SmallRex / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (倉林研究室): “Ant Colony Trail” Prof OJ / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (佐藤研究室): “Automobile exhaust gas” Ruben de Rijcke / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (奥富・紋野研究室): “Monmouth castle point cloud, created with Photosynth 01” John Cummings / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
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