Sound source localization and tracking algorithms provide estimates
of the positional information about active sound sources in acous-
tic environments. Despite substantial advances and significant in-
terest in the research community, a comprehensive benchmarking
campaign of the various approaches using a common database of
audio recordings has, to date, not been performed. The aim of the
IEEE-AASP Challenge on sound source localization and tracking
(LOCATA) is to objectively benchmark state-of-the-art localization
and tracking algorithms using an open-access data corpus of record-
ings for scenarios typically encountered in audio and acoustic signal
processing applications. The challenge tasks range from the local-
ization of a single source with a static microphone array to tracking
of multiple moving sources with a moving microphone array. This
paper provides an overview of the challenge tasks, describes the per-
formance measures used for evaluation of the LOCATA Challenge,
and presents baseline results for the development dataset.