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Echolocation for Humans
anoopsinha writes "An article in New Scientist reports that bat echos can be used as virtual reality guide. People wearing headphones could easily hunt down a 'virtual insect', using only the echolocation sounds. The report says that it is a 'very intuitive process.' The researchers behind the project hope that a similar system in the cockpit of fighter planes could allow pilots to track some controls using their hearing, freeing up their eyes for other tasks."
We did some experiments with this in cognitive theory class, and it was really, really bizarre.
Maybe I missed something, but can't this be used to help the blind navigate around their homes or even outdoors? It's the first thing I would think of rather than fighter pilots.
I remember some 5 or 6 years ago I saw a story on some daytime talk show about people overcoming their disabilities; not that it's all that unusual, but one guest in particular who has been blind since birth, actually used echolocation to get around. He made regular clicking sounds with his tounge and he could navigate down a city street without any real assistance. It was actually quite amazing. Although, I don't know any blind fighter pilots but the principal is sound. Humans do have echolocation abilities, it would just take a long time time to develop any natural ability.
Though you'd have to neutralize for relatively high velocity, and map to a different signal entirely (probably radio), before converting into sound... Doppler would tell you relative speed, and you would need some sort of tracking system (headset/goggles + sensors?) to locate your ears...
GPL Deconstructed
David Dunn's Angels and Insects, although not a study of audio based VR (or even featuring bat sounds for that matter), is a great place to get started listening to microscopic sounds.
Here's an MP3 of some insects in Africa getting it on.
If you think this stuff sounds like fun you might want to do what I did a few years ago and pick up a high quality microphone with a big diaphragm, such as an AKG C414, and get out into the woods at night and make some recordings. You'll be surprised what's out there when you start filtering out the sounds humans make and crank the volume!!
WWAAAAY back in quake2 I could track exactly where my opponents were on a map, as long as I was wearing headphones. The headphones were necessary to get the stereoimaging right, as speakers can be a bit difficult to set up. So how is this at all suprising?
Damn, this is the coolest thing I've read in a long time! Imagine having a second set of low grade eye that worked in the dark. You could do all sorts of cool things with it, like effectively having a set of eyes on the back of your head.
The article mentions one potential application being that you could look at dials and switces without taking your eyes off what you were doing. However, would shifting your attention to echo location be as bad as looking away would? Think cell phones. It's kind of like chameleons - they can point their eyes in different directions, but can they concentrate on both of them at the same time? Could humans gain the ability to concentrate on more than one sensory input at a time? Probably not, but the input would still be there and would catch our attention anytime something notable happened. Like when we see something out of the corner of our eye, or hear our name in a crowd. Cognetics is so cool.
It also talked about how bats adjust the frequency of the waves sent out, as the distance to the object changes. I imagine for a bat this would be as automatic as focusing our eyes is to us. We would have to do this manualy, like focusing a camera. Oh, but what if we interfaced the brain or some nerves and trained the mind to do the focusing!
I've always thought that if I were to loose a limb in an accident I would be pounding down doors at universities acrossed the country to find one willing to attempt to use the nerves once controlling my limb to instead control a keyboard/mouse type interface (which would comunicate to the PC via bluetooth eventually). But this is even cooler, and I imagine provided a little information from Dean waters on this, you could build something like this on your own. Hot damn, I have a new project!
Or imagine a radar system encoding direction, distance and speed of a target into some surround sound system...
To me, especially the threat warning system looks interesting, because you can hear something even if it's behind you, while your eyes only see stuff in front of you. Imagine, the advantage if you can hear at once that that radar site that just started chirping seems to be in the direction of the depression in the ridge you just passed so you can do something about it, or the fighter radar that just started chirping is at your 6 o'clock - that guy is in a bad position... wait, now he's switched from search to attack mode - now you're in trouble... ;-]
Or if you could hear the drone of your wingman - you'd definitely hear if he gets out of position...
Cheers, Ulli
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.
As anyone with bad hearing in one ear (like me) will attest, stereo location using sound is a very weak sense. Having worked with stereoscopic 3D images for many years, I have found that about 10-20% of all people have vision problems in one eye that are just bad enough that they can't see the stereographic effect. I expect that similarly, there are enough people with weak hearing in one ear, enough to prevent a similarly large group from using audio stereolocation.
I've been doing this for ages - there is a hallway at work where the light switch is at the far end of the hall.. in winter, the hall is completely dark after 4PM or so.
:o) so I don't need to make 'extra' sounds..
making clicks with your tongue or other brief sounds
Actually, I just use my footfalls - I've got extremely sensitive hearing (I always know where our cat is because I can hear his footfalls on the carpet - which freaked out my wife for the first few years
this probably only works if there is only one "clicker" in the area. Otherwise you'd get your echoes confused with the others, with embarassing results. Also, there must be some relatively low velocity limit, since your interpretation of the echo likely depends on (your knowledge of) the origination point of the audio source. I bet parking meters and telephone poles are quite stealthy against this technology. Rather than trying to navigate yourself down a straight hallway alone, try blindfolding a bunch of people and get them to echolocate around a circle - better than twister!
but.. tihs is aonhter ltitle kwon slkil
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
bite my glorious golden ass.
Not really. You're thinking in terms of radar, where azimuth and range are determined by matching a single ping with a single pong. In such systems, multiple sources or multiple path replies are a source of confusion since they add too much information to the process. If you're trying to paint a sonic landscape, however, you don't want to try and associate a single ping and pong since that would only identify the range to a single reflector in one small portion of your area of interest. Instead, you want to receive as much information about the environment as possible from each ping. Having someone/something else making the ping isn't a problem as long as they don't overwhelm the replies.
As an experiment, try sitting in a place with a fair amount of white noise (such as CPU fans). Now slowly bring your right hand toward your ear with your palm open. The first thing you'll notice is a loss of some higher frequency ambient sounds from the right side. As the hand gets closer, you may notice an increase in reflected noises that originated on your left. Eventually you will be able to judge the distance between your ear and your palm simply by the tone of the noise.
I was about to launch into cries of "idiot", "troll", and "crazy man", but two lines into your post I totally realized what was going on. That's pretty amazing stuff! And a bit spooky too when you're reading away at normal speed and know exactly what it says.
It does, however, highlight the importance of context and knowledge, since Cmabrigde could be read as anything if we didn't all know about Cambridge.
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How can bats flying blindly detect 1/100 inch wires from several feet away, dodge stalactites in pitch-dark caves, catch insects on the wing or fish in motion just below the surface of the water, and find their way back to their home roost? In this remarkable book, a pioneering scientist in the areas of neurobiology and behavior explains in layperson's language just how bats can "see" with their ears.
Quoted from Amazon
This is nothing new. Most of the techniques, talked about, have been used with RADAR for decades. The thing that bats do, is interpret the sonic wavefront. This is accomplished by the structure of the head and ears. They produce subtle phase shifting depending on the direction the waves are coming from. Humans do this also, but not nearly to the degree that bats do it. Its the bats need to manipulate wavefronts that has caused the evolution of the many spectacular head shapes. If a model of one of the simpler bats ( i.e. not a Mexican Freetail) is made that duplicates the affect that a bat has on its call, and place microphones were the eardrums are, a human would still need a lot of training to learn how to interpret the signals. Bats probably have a hardware solution to do some of this interpratation ( just like humans have a partialy hardware solution to the problem of parsing speach phonems). The only cool "bat" thing, the artical talks about, is the dynamic nature of the sound generation. Bats are in effect using sound like hands, to feel. But this is not unique to bats. The gymnatoid eels do something simular with electric signals. They also use the chirp modulation thing. I noticed that the artical does have a link to Waters website. I guess that counters some of the lameness.
Actually one of my relatives (who was blinded while blasting tree stumps) was noted for using echolocation. He did all of the daily chores at his farm by snapping his fingers as he walked to locate the different structures, door openings etc. It was rather amazing to watch as he didn't have any problem "seeing" if things had been moved around, or someone had parked a truck in his way.
Somewhere here I have a full page story about him that was in the St. Louis Post Dispatch back about 20 years ago. If I find it, I'll post some of the commentary...
I wrtoe a llitte sprcit in PHP taht dtaemrntesos tihs bivaoher. Cehck it out. I tnhik it's ptetry cool.
(Of crouse, scroue cdoe is mdae aivllabae uednr the GPL.)
It seems even Google understands it, because the search results started with: "Do you mean: According research".
As a sidenote, there's a great book called _Thought Contagion_, although I don't remember who it's by. If you're interested in Memeonics (The study of Memes.) check out that book.
Your mind is like a parachute. It works best when it's been opened.
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