Slashdot Mirror
Robot Bat With Echolocation
productdose.com writes "A robotic bat head that can emit and detect ultrasound in the band of frequencies used by the world's bats will give echolocation research a huge boost. Sonar in water is a mature field, but sonar in air is far less advanced. Whenever a robot team wants to build an autonomous robot they look at sonar first, but they quickly run into problems due to the simple nature of commercial sonar systems, and switch to vision or laser-ranging. The
IST project CIRCE hopes that the research they can now do with the robotic bat will lead to more sophisticated sonar systems being used for robot navigation and other applications."
It collects information about its surroundings, evaluates it, and then discards the data in favour of running into un-seen objects.
I saw this one on Loony Tunes...the robot bat is dressed up as an attractive female bat, and lures the lovestruck male bat offscreen, where it then explodes, charring the male bat most humourously.
At least that's the way I remember it. Stupid closed-head injury...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
What? It's not MIT? ... so who cares, then?
I swear, I haven't heard that word since elementary school... After hearing about if for a few years, no one gives a damn about how bats get around.
Is is is...there there there...anyone anyone anyone...in in in....there there there?
Its just not cricket.
This sig is intentionally blank
Question: is it waterproof? Man, I can't wait to take one of these babies in the pool to play marco polo! Then we'll FINALLY get to have a proper showdown between man and machine! USA! USA!
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
One project partner developed a broadband transducer that could both convert acoustical energy to electrical energy and electrical to acoustical across the 20 to 200 kHz spectrum.
Now all we need to do is train bats to repeat what they hear, and we will have wireless TCP/IP by bat.I, for one, welcome our new robotic homerun hitting overlords.
Still IMing in the stone age?
With the demise of real nature, and cutting cost on the remaining nature, the following proposals are being made:
In cities replace real gras with fake gras, same for flowers and trees (who cares that the real versions produce oxygen, and reduce polution in several ways)
Since plastic trees and flowers are less likely to sustain life, other forms of life will be replaced too. The research sofar has the following:
Robotic dog
Robotic cat
Head of bat (hey, Do you want to have them flying around?)
Some fake cockroaches
For on the benches in the parks, which without real nature will be less attractive anyway, all dirt which is now cleaned up by nature, will stay around, we will have cute looking japanese femal robots able to wave at you when you drive by, making it look very lively.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
... so does wearing a tinfoil hat help protect you from these robotic bats?
Or does tinfoil help "bounce" the sounds back and give them a better target!?!
It is getting so hard to be paranoid these days.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Not sure If I'm for or against this.
On the one hand, bats are scary.
And yet everyone likes a little head.