Extraction of ground reaction forces for real-time synthesis of walking sounds

A shoe-independent system to synthesize real-time footstep sounds on different materials has been developed. A footstep sound is considered as the result of an interaction between an exciter (the shoe) and a resonator (the floor). To achieve our goal, we propose two different solutions. The first solution is based on contact microphones attached on the exterior part of each shoe, which capture the sound of a footstep. The second approach consists on using microphones placed on the floor. In both situations, the captured sound is analysed and used to control a sound synthesis engine. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches.