Adding audio data helps AI navigate 3D mazes

Sight is the sense on which humans chiefly rely to navigate the world, but sound might be just as important — it’s been shown that people can learn to follow subtle cues in the volume, direction, and speed of audio signals. Inspired by this, scientists at the University of Eastern Finland recently proposed in a preprint paper (“Do Autonomous Agents Benefit from Hearing?“) an AI system that complements visual data with sound. Preliminary results, they say, indicate that the approach improves agents’ ability to complete goals in a 3D maze.

“Learning using only visual information may not always be easy for the learning agent,” wrote the coauthors. “For example, it is difficult for the agent to reach the target using only visual information in scenarios where there are many rooms and there is no direct line of sight between the agent and the target … Thus, the use of audio features could provide valuable information for such problems.”