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."

Comments

wrong direction?

[Pr0xY]

i think that these researchers are likely going in the wrong direction. The way I see it, the main problem with things like sonar isn't lack of signals or information. It's processing that information and coming up with useful data. The impressive thing about bats is that they can use the data they resieve meaningfully, not that they can recieve it. once they start writing software that can accurately map a 3d landscape on sonar alone, i'll be more impressed. proxy

I wonder..

[jcr]

If any biologists are reading this, I wonder if any other terrestrial nocturnal animals use echolocation? I know that some birds (owls in particular) are very good in low-light conditions, do any of them navigate with sound as well?

-jcr