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

GNAA Research Division exposes Zionist plot

[Anonymous Coward]

GNAA Research Division exposes long standing Zionist plot
Impi - Research Division, South Africa.

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About The Jewish Justice League

The Jewish Justice League was founded by the mothers and wives of Israel who were concerned that their men were being drawn to the Nigger Seed and away from their wives.

About Areems

Fat.

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So, what does your robot do?

[cryptoz]

It collects information about its surroundings, evaluates it, and then discards the data in favour of running into un-seen objects.

Re:So, what does your robot do?

[Eightyford]

So you've met my robot then? Sorry but it's really hard to program that sort of thing!

Re:So, what does your robot do?

[cujo_1111]

I, for one, welcome our robotic bat overlords...

Re:So, what does your robot do?

[Prophet of Nixon]

Its blind as a bat with laryngitis!

I remember this one...

[TripMaster Monkey]

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...

Sounds fascinating!

[Anonymous Coward]

What? It's not MIT? ... so who cares, then?

What the fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, why do you think evolution gave us eyes and 3-D visual brain power? It's much more effective to use vision and realtime 3D processing when in relative low density than sound based ranging. For instance, how would you know something is wet, soft or alive with sound alone?
 
Oh and can a bat see when I'm drunk?

Re:What the fuck

[nzkbuk]

Who says the visual spectrum of the EM band is the best way to interperit the world.

Wet, the only way to be sure if something is wet is to touch it (or put some other sensor into or onto it. I've seen lots of thengs that "looked" wet but it was just the glossy type look.

Soft, Sound is a MUCH better indicator for softness than sight. We've learnt that certain things look hard and soft. it's no measure if they are or not. You can make a barbell out of foam and with a good paint job it will look exactly like the real thing until you touch it. it won't however sound like a solid piece of metal. the returning sound will be muted / distorted.

Alive, see soft. I've seen people make realistic looking things on the beach. They could never have been alive, but they can look it.

Sorry bot the 3 examples you've used would have to be the worst 3. A more likely reason we have 2 eyes is we were origionally predators. We notice movement and distance well. It helps us hunt. As sight is effectivly passive (we don't have to shine light out of our eyes) it allows us to be more stealthy.
While bats use sonar, it's an active sensor. you have to keep making sound to use it. If more predatory animals used sonar to hunt, then more hunted animals would be able to detect it.

Back on topic however, If naval sonar is so advanced, why is atmospheric sonar so lacking ?
isn't it essentually a timing thing (sound travels faster in denser mediums like water than air). put a different emitter on and then adjust the timings.

Oh and if you're just sitting down, not moving etc can anyone see that you're drunk ?

Re:What the fuck

[utnow]

I think the general conscensus is that a combination of several methods is the best way to observe and interpret the world. Obviously visual isn't the most accurate otherwise eye-witness testimony would mean more and it wouldn't be so easy for hollywood to convince us that keanu revees can fly. Sound isn't nessicarily the best way because it's quite easy to be fooled by such things as a tennis racket being swung through the air (mwhaha). Touch isn't always 100% accurate either due to the way it's wired to the brain (try having a friend cross their index and middle finger and close their eyes. then use a pencil to touch right in the middle of the tips of their crossed fingers. very strange sensation).

The reason we have five senses (and potentially others) is that each of them reduces the uncertainty of the observation.

PS: If you observe certain muscles in the face, they tend to be far more relaxed when intoxicated, resulting in that stupid 'drunk gaze'.

Re:What the fuck

[Itchy Rich]

Back on topic however, If naval sonar is so advanced, why is atmospheric sonar so lacking ? isn't it essentually a timing thing (sound travels faster in denser mediums like water than air). put a different emitter on and then adjust the timings.

Air and water have very different sonic properties. Air is highly compressible, water is less so. Sounds travel short distances in air compared to water... etc.

Sonar was developed because you can't see underwater. The military has invested huge sums refining it. Above ground we can see, so nobody's bothered researching air-based sonar to the same degree.

Re:What the fuck

[Ihlosi]

A more likely reason we have 2 eyes is we were origionally predators.

The reason why we have 2 eyes, aligned in a way that lets us judge range, is that our ancestors were hopping from tree to tree. Misjudging distances while doing so can have consequences ranging from "painful" to "removal from the gene pool".

We notice movement and distance well.

Compared to a real predator, we're pretty much blind in these regards.

It helps us hunt.

Not really. Hunters do not need color perception, instead they need high resolution (especially temporal) and good performance through a wide spectrum of light intensities.

We, on the other hand, have sacrificed low-light performance for color perception so we can tell the red fruit from the green fruit and the leaves.

If naval sonar is so advanced, why is atmospheric sonar so lacking ?

Sound (especially ultrasound) attenuation in air is a real pain here, as is the low, low speed of sound in air.

Re:What the fuck

[robertjw]

Sonar was developed because you can't see underwater. The military has invested huge sums refining it. Above ground we can see, so nobody's bothered researching air-based sonar to the same degree.

Not exactly true. You can definitely see underwater, your range is just limited. Sonar extends that range. Above ground we have radar. Sonar wouldn't have significantly more range than visual does, so the military has no need to invest in sonar.

Re:What the fuck

[Itchy Rich]

Not exactly true. You can definitely see underwater...

Nobody told me that! I always wondered why fish had eyes...

Echolocation

[Gertlex]

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.

Re:Echolocation

[ozbon]

Well, except for people like submariners and pilots - sonar and radar are basically just echolocation.

Sonar in particular, of course, but radar is just echo-location using radio waves instead of sound waves.

Echo, echo...

[Joey Patterson]

Is is is...there there there...anyone anyone anyone...in in in....there there there?

Um...

[Anonymous Crowhead]

what?

Does it go...

[Anonymous Coward]

BANG! ZAP! PHOOM!

?

Re:Does it go...

[Chosen Reject]

No, but I hear they will be mounting refrigerator sized lasers on them.

Quick! Get in the Robo Batmobile! Roborobin!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gonna cruise for some robo babes.

Make it right!

[PaulBu]

For all the old Pink Floyd fans -- it's "ANYBODY", not "ANYONE"! ;-)

Paul B.

Re:Make it right!

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, read my mind and made my day.

*Cranks C.N.*

Re:Make it right!

[Guignol]

That would also be out (there) not in (there)

Re:Make it right!

[PaulBu]

Actually, there were both, though the 'out' one was the title of the song, but "is there anybody IN there" was also mentioned in slightly different context... happy hunting! ;-)

Paul B.

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

Re:wrong direction?

[superpulpsicle]

The bigger problem with the processing is that echolocation requires 2 organs. A mouth to send the signal and an ear to receive. Sight for example, only requires eyes alone to see.

Re:wrong direction?

[jcr]

Well, you gotta start somewhere, and you need a sensor before you can synthesize a 3D model.

-jcr

Re:wrong direction?

[rolfmueller]

You are right, receiving a signal is not enough. You need to receive the right signal and then process it in the right way. The question is where to process. Traditionally, simple receivers were used and sophisticated processing performed afterwards was then supposed to get all the information from their output. That never worked. What we learn from bats is that the processing has to start early on, i.e., what signal ("sonar ping") to use, how to spread its energy in the environment, where to point the ear in the environment and for which sounds from where to be sensitive. Remember that by virtue of the data processing lemma in information theory, you can only throw information away when processing sensor output. However, if you influence the process where information is created, you have control over what information comes into the system.

Producing an accurate 3d landscape representation is probably not the way to go either. If you design a robot, this is rarely what you want. A robot has to navigate around and to attain some goals, so it should extract from its sensors exactly the information that it needs to do that. 3d Map are unnecessary detours in most cases, because you still have to interprete the map then.

Re:wrong direction?

[Anonymous Coward]

And light.

Re:wrong direction?

[amodm]

Even with sight you require two eyes to form a meaningful 3-d image. With one eye, the image will not be stereoscopic.

Re:wrong direction?

[b0r1s]

Actually, you need more than one sensor before you can synthesize a 3D model... and because in echolocation, the sending sensor is not the same as receving sensor, you really need 4 sensors total.

For light/video sensors, you'd need 2 cameras/lasers, plus you'd gain the ability to use edges and colors to identify meaningful objects...

Re:wrong direction?

[theapodan]

You yourself reveal that you need "eyes" to see, that is, you need 2 of them. Without mutiple eyes, you can't establish a range to anything.

And why exactly is this a problem? Are you saying that researchers couldn't successfully sync send and receive information?

As a fisherman, I can tell you that bats are amazing, they often chase my bug around as I false cast.

If you're interested in bats, I recommend you get a membership with Bats Conservation International http://www.batcon.org/ For only $30 you can be a member. And helping furry creatures is good for the soul.

Re:wrong direction?

[strider44]

What are you talking about? You only need one sonar sensor to get distance to an object. You can do this just by taking the time the sound takes to come back, halving it and then multiplying it by 340. It's not an eye! (On another note, the sender is not a "sensor" it's a "sender" or rather a "pinger".)

Re:wrong direction?

[TapeCutter]

"and because in echolocation, the sending sensor is not the same as receving sensor, you really need 4 sensors total."

Rubbish, a bat can catch a moth ("meaningfull object") in flight ("3D model"). It can do this in total darkness using two sensors and an emitter, it's the same principle as a robot carrying it's own light source in the dark.

Re:wrong direction?

[mbrx]

It does not sound like you have had very much hands on experience with sonars within robotics. The current state of commercially available sonars (in the air) provides a single range measurement for a cone (usually ca. 30 degrees, but sometimes much smaller). This range measurement is *very* unreliable since it only gives the distance to one point (usually the closest) within this cone and only under the rights circumstances (depending on the material, the angle towards sonar etc.). The biggest problem with these sensors is the low angular resolution and unreliability. Nonetheless the state of the art in, for instance, map building manages to construct some surprisingly accurate maps, to navigate in indoor environments etc. To say that the data isn't _used_ well enough is not an accurate description of the problem. The problem rather lies in the sensors and in the signal processing (computing eg. range data). Oh, and also: if you are interested in robotics make sure to take a look at Player/Stage http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/ which is an opensource implementation of drivers for various commercial robots as well as some controll functionalities, simulators etc.

Re:wrong direction?

[Ihlosi]

Without mutiple eyes, you can't establish a range to anything.

Yes you can, it's just a bit slower and more complicated. * You can move a single eye and use the parallax effect to gauge distance. * You can use information from the focusing system to gauge relative and, if you're good, absolute distances. * The expert system in your brain can tell from the size of an object how far it is away.

Re:wrong direction?

[commodoresloat]

i think that these researchers are likely going in the wrong direction.

Yes, but once they get the kinks ironed out in their echolocation, they will be able to go in the right direction.

Re:wrong direction?

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on your point of view. For traditional AI, you're absolutely correct. But there is another approach, that says the clever part is the sensors. Provide the right kind of data, and processing it is relatively easy (as in possible). Let the environment do as much of the processing for you as possible.

In this case, the key here is bandwidth. Your standard quartz 40kHz ultrasonic system has virtually zero bandwidth. These guys are working 20-200kHz, so they get much more information were echo. One project is to try to identify plants by their echo image. Clever stuff, and yes, it needs the right sensor system to be possible. They are doing some interesting research into ear shape - it's surprising how much 'processing' is done by physical shape. It's a nice parallel analogue system, which would take a horrible number of cycles to do on a uC.

What sort of 3D landscape map do you want? One that looks nice, like in your favourite computer game, or one that a bat might use to catch dinner and get home again. They're unlikely to look all that similar.

Re:wrong direction?

[ozbon]

I think that he means "two sensors in order to triangulate" etc.

There was a bit of confusion between sensor and emitter though. *grin*

Basically, it needs one sender and two receivers/sensors in order to triangulate accurately. Yes, it could get by with one sender and one receiver, but then it would need time to establish a baseline in order to triangulate from send/receive1to send/receive2 - which is made harder when the target isn't static either.

Re:wrong direction?

[Chosen Reject]

You could also use one eye and a tape measure.

Re:wrong direction?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you could create an internal 3d map of the robots surrounding and drive it accordingly you could be well on the way to an automatic(as in - fully drives itself) car with no special roads required.It simply needs to identify potential threats and obstacles(like pedestrians and dogs) and slow down and/or swerve to avoid them.I think research in this direction could prove extremely profitable.

Pieter Jacobus Otto - i said it first!

Re:wrong direction?

[strider44]

Please read my post again. There's no need or reason to triangulate since you can find the distance to an object by timing the pings.

Re:wrong direction?

[ozbon]

Please read my reply again. If you're trying to locate a moving item (whether through your own movement or through the item's movement) then it's best to be able to continually triangulate the distance, rather than just timing the response.

Hence why bats (and most animals) have multiple receptors (eyes, ears, etc.) when distance/triangulation is a factor.

Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house ..

[xmas2003]

I've had six bats show up in my house over the years (including one in the kitchen sink - good thing my wife didn't see that one) ... while I like 'em for the insect/mosquito eating, I prefer them outside rather than swooping around inside my house ...

BTW, that URL shows me using a pair of screen windows to "fend" one off (I was only armed with a frisbee) - I figured that would provide a pretty good radar return as "solid" surface.

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

Re:I wonder..

[Eightyford]

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong; but I believe that moths actually have a natural "radar detector" for sensing their predator's (bats) pings.

Heh, is pings still the correct word when it's for sonar?

Re:I wonder..

[zippthorne]

where do you think the word came from?

Re:I wonder..

[FleaPlus]

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong; but I believe that moths actually have a natural "radar detector" for sensing their predator's (bats) pings.

Yup, although it's a purely passive system. There's a fairly extensive overview of how moths detect bats' echolocation pulses. The behavior is kind of interesting... If the moth hears a weak sound (indicating the bat is far away), the moths will just turn around and fly away. If the sound is moderate, the moth will start looping around or stop flapping its wings and flutter down like a leaf. If the sound is really loud, indicating that the moth has a few milliseconds before it becomes bat food, the moth will suddenly fold its wings in and dive down as fast as it can.

One of my profs mentioned that if you make really high-pitched noises around moths, you can initiate the various evasive maneuvers. I can't remember how to make the noise... maybe something like rubbing aluminum foil together could do it.

There's also a similar page on the neuroethology of bat echolocation.

Re:I wonder..

[rolfmueller]

A few terrestrial animals other than bats use sonar. An example is the Oilbird (Steatornis caripensis) in South America as well as some swiftlets. Owls also use sound to track down their prey, but they do not produce "sonar pings" them themselves. Instead, the listen to sounds that the pre-produces.

Re:I wonder..

[Walt Dismal]

Hopefully this isn't too far off-topic, but - why did Batman never incorporate sonar or electronic sensors in his costume? It would help to have some way to detect things in the dark. And he has the ears already. Seems to me to be a natural.

Re:I wonder..

[biovoid]

Some owl species (particularly nocturnal ones) have one ear higher than the other, so that they can locate the position of a sound vertically as well as horizontally, due to one ear receiving the just sound before the other does.

Re:I wonder..

[baadger]

Because DareDevil fans would have been pissed that someone with a suit so shit was upstaging him.

Re:I wonder..

[strider44]

I thought it was this:

> ping www.google.com
PING www.l.google.com (66.102.7.99) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 66.102.7.99: icmp_seq=1 ttl=241 time=430 ms
64 bytes from 66.102.7.99: icmp_seq=2 ttl=241 time=256 ms

Re:I wonder..

[CmdrGravy]

Flying dolphins use echo location very successfully. They only hunt at night and have learned to avoid human contact at all costs ( which is why you have probably never heard of them ) which is some indication of just how good their echo location must be.

Re:I wonder..

[Fallus Shempus]

http://actionfiguresbygofigure.com/product3193.htm l

Ok so it's a toy, but I think he used something like sonar
in the big ol' suit he built to kick a Predators ass in the
imaginitvely titled
Batman Vs. Predator

Re:I wonder..

[teaserX]

... maybe something like rubbing aluminum foil together could do it. So if I rub tinfoil together moths will fall from the sky...or is this a "pulled-from-my-ass-and-you'll-just-look-like-a-fo ol-if-you try-it" type example?
Just curious.
'Cause I got plenty of foil and some time on my hands.

Re:I wonder..

[lonely]

Some birds do, after a quick google:

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761552516/Bird .html#p191

Also remember that insectiverous bats, ie the small ones, evolved* there ability to ecolocate seperately from the unrelated mega bats, mostly fruitbats.

Re:I wonder..

[zippthorne]

I meant why do you think you use the word ping for that?

Re:I wonder..

[Anonymous Coward]

Has it occured to you that the use of the word ping to describe bouncing a signal off of a target might be older than network applications? That it might be reminiscent of a time when the signal used was a sweep of sound frequencies that to the casual observer would sound like the ping a glass makes when you strike it?

Re:I wonder..

[asterisk_man]

Don't forget about human echolocation

Re:I wonder..

[strider44]

*sigh* I knew exactly what you meant. For further reading, here's the definition of "joke" for you.

Re:I wonder..

[grammar fascist]

So if I rub tinfoil together moths will fall from the sky...

Yep. And if you bang a couple of sticks together while hiking, it keeps away the mountain lions.

Re:I wonder..

[FleaPlus]

So if I rub tinfoil together moths will fall from the sky...or is this a pulled-from-my-ass-and-you'll-just-look-like-a-fo ol-if-you try-it" type example?

A little of both... more like a can't-exactly-remember-what-professor-said-but-tin foil-sounds-about-right example. :)

Although nothing seems to show up on google...

Re:I wonder..

[Guppy06]

"maybe something like rubbing aluminum foil together could do it."

Shiney to shiney, dull to dull, or shiney to dull?

Insert ...

[AdamReyher]

Sorry. It's all I could come up with. Squeek.

wrong direction?-Getting Head.

[Anonymous Coward]

You remember those "human heads" they use in some recording studios? Same idea.

--
The "are you a script" word for today is discover.

Robot bats??

[Vombatus]

Its just not cricket.

Re:Robot bats??

[mog007]

You misspelled Krikkit.

Re:Robot bats??

[strider44]

So that's how the aussie team are planning on countering England's reverse swing.

Re:Robot bats??

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is a US site - I thought it was going to be baseball.

i do agree with one thing

[blackcoot]

sonar does, indeed, suck. and not in the fun way.

why, you ask?

1) it's an active sensing modality (unless you've got a really bigass submarine with phased passive sonar arrays and a huge baseline, you're not going to get any range data out of the thing passively).

2) it's really damn tricky to process properly. sonar tends to fail in littoral waters because of multipath, echos, etc. in man made environments, the multipath + echo issues become really damn hard to solve without some good 3D models of the world around you (but if you can build those models, why bother with the sonar?)

3) signal to noise ratios are killer. this coupled with the innate difficulties in processing sonar /anyways/ pretty much seal the deal.

4) compared to other sensing modalities for non-aquatic environments, sonar just can't compete. if you have a single, calibrated camera and know its pose relative to the ground, you can calculate the exact position of any object on the ground. (more generally: if you know the pose of the camera relative to a known plane, you can precisely determine the position of any point on that plane up to what the camera's resolution will allow) if you have a stereo head, things get a lot more interesting (you can combine stereo imaging with structure from motion and get some highly accurate ranges).

that all said, if this research can solve those problems, i know i will gladly use their sonar / echolocation stuff (it can't be blinded by the sun, unlike ladars, although both will have major issues with rain).

Re:i do agree with one thing

[rolfmueller]

As a general comment, I would like to remind you that bats are an "existence proof" for the power of in-air sonar. These animals are active in 3-dimensional space, they are versatile, often predatory, and they can achieve all with biosonar as a sufficent far sense. As to your specific points:
1) sonar can be used both in active and passive mode. You are correct that range information is not easily obtained in the latter case, but range is not everything and you can learn a lot form listening to what is going on around you. Using an active sense and bringing your own energy sources can also be an advantage, if there are none around.
2) sonar can be used for many other things than building 3d models. You may for instance tell what kind of environment you are in, whether you are likely to collide with an obstacle, etc., all without a 3d map.
3) Ultrasound in air has a limited range due to absorption and spreading losses. However, when operating at a close range (say within 10-15 meters) you can get excellent signal-to-noise ratios (say 40 to 80 dB). If you don't move too fast, such a range should do.
4) The question is what you want to do. Sonar can easily outperform a camera, if there is no light, or if the air is filled with thick smoke, in murmky water, and so on. Other issues are the cost of processing, data storage, and so on. Your fance stereo processing isn't exactly cheap computationally, so far a small consumer electronics product, sonar may offer a much better deal, for instance.

Re:i do agree with one thing

[blackcoot]

1) i try to avoid active sensing wherever possible. sonar (and, i suspect, ultrasonics too) have the same problems that gps has: multiple returns. there are tricks you can use to try to limit those (phase modulation, frequence modulation, and so on), the problem is that in sonar those problems are only exacerbated by the incredibly complex geometry to man made environments. as i pointed out, sonar in shallow waters has this same problem.

there is also a question of what happens when you attempt to build a team of collaborative robots using active sensing. you either have to be very careful about tuning their sensors so that they don't get confused when they're near each other or you have to limit your use of active sensing to only when other robots aren't close enough to get confused.

2) EO/IR imagery can alse be used to compute more than 3D information. we use it to do terrain classification on an (almost) daily basis.

3) doesn't work for my applications, or any application where you have an actuated vehicle moving at highway speeds. this is (plus uavs) is where the bulk of my work is done.

4) you are correct in that it does depend on my application. the technology that i build may, eventually, be incorporated into high end vehicles, but i doubt that it will ever be a part of a consumer electronic product. however, if it ever does get incorporated into consumer electronics, the interference issues that i described earlier will become even more of a problem (imagine if every furrby sold had a sonar in it!)

i do not disagree that bats prove that sonar / echolocation can be useful; however, the current state of sonar leaves a great deal to be desired. once vendors are able to deliver sonar units which offer the same kind of performance that other ranging and visual phenomenologies offer with significant utility (either for cheap, magnitudes easier to process, magnitudes lighter / smaller, etc.) i will gladly incorporate sonar into whatever sensor suites i'm using. that said, i'm not holding my breath.

Re:i do agree with one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, something I can comment on ....

For several years I developed echo processing software for commercial sonar ultrasonic ranging systems. You can get quite a bit of info depending on how much processing you're willing to do and the range is dependent upon the power output and the area of the receiving element.

My old employer (milltronics.com - go ahead /. them!!) has several level systems with ranges up to 200 feet. Sure the transducer is physically large but it's possible. (OK so you'd need a GIANT bat head)

Re:i do agree with one thing

[sandmaninator]

I would imagine the applicability of sonar would be limited due to the relatively slow speed of the sonic wave. You might not want to use this technology for adaptive cruise control in cars, for example. Light waves and radar microwaves being much faster.

Endless amounts of fun!

[RootsLINUX]

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!

Holy Cow Batman!! We're on the batnet!!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Holy Cow Batman!! We're on the batnet!!

[jcaren]

I can smell an RFC here :-)

Re:Holy Cow Batman!! We're on the batnet!!

[AgentPhunk]

I think somebody at O'Reilly had a different implemtation for it.

Ultrasound band saturation?

[Max Romantschuk]

While this in interesting research, I can't help wonder if they are taking into account the possible negative effects this might have on real bats. Could too much noise confuse them? As I've understood, bats can cooperate in order not to create too much noise. One chirps, many listen to the result.

I doubt a robot would show the same courtesy...

Re:Ultrasound band saturation?

[rolfmueller]

First of all, it is still not fully clear if bats take special actions to avoid "jamming" each other. Ultrasound doesn't carry far (due to absorption) and ultrasonic emissions by bats (and the CIRCE head) are pretty directional, i.e., sound goes mostly into one direction. So the space that is "jammed" by a bat (or a robot) is really small. In the temporal domain, there are a lot of pauses, too. So one sonar system (bat or robot) really influences only a small volume for short time intervals, which should not hamper others all that much.

Re:Ultrasound band saturation?

[frozen_kangaroo]

This is something that has interested me for some time - I have always wondered how they avoid jamming each other. Having stumbled into a small disused building full of sleeping bats and accidentally disturbed (hundreds of) them, I can safely say that they do sometimes flock together in large numbers. This would mean that in this situation, if they only relied on direction to "filter" out their own noise, in a flock like this they would be effectively blinded by each other ( perhaps they were! it wasn't dark at the time and they do have eyes they could use)

Also, even though the emissions from your bat head are directional, the reflected signals aren't going to be. A bat could pick up the reflected signals from another bat if his/her ears were pointed in the right direction. Temporal domain "filtering" is possible: speed of sound in air 330m/s; therefore anything heard >~100ms after emission can be disregarded, but when they go for their prey I noticed that they don't leave a lot of a gap between clicks - making very rapid repetitions of noises until they catch that insect.

Another consideration - the consequences of getting an eroneous picture of the world around you and subsequent poor navigation could result in injury - a big deal for a creature that has to be able to fly to catch food. IMVHO it is unlikely that they haven't evolved anti-jamming technology.

Humans can recognise an individual voice in a crowded room - it is possible to "tune in" to a conversation at a table behind you in a crowded restaurant above all of the noise in the same frequency band. From my experience of DSP, I would hate to imagine the complexity of what is going on in the brain in this situation, but clearly it can be done - the neuro/physiological processing such as that found in hearing and sight leaves me in absolute awe.

Bat emissions look pretty complex to me, and I'm willing to bet that they do identify their own squeak amongst all of the other noise. Modern radar uses correlation and signature techniques that mean that they only identify their own emissions. Why not bats ? Is this part of your project ? [ good luck with the work by the way it sounds like great fun. ]

Re:Ultrasound band saturation?

[rolfmueller]

There are certainly situations with so many bats so close to each other that they will likely jam each other, e.g. in a large colony. However, in most of these situations, the bats are "at home", so they don't need and - as anecdotal evidence suggests - probably don't read their sonar.

Since bat sonar is directional on the emission and reception side, as well as - for "resonably" specular targets - on the reflection side, is range-limited by absorption, and - as you point out correctly - there is a time window for reception, I expect that jamming is not much of a problem and bats probably do not require much sophistication in dealing with it.

For these reasons, I am not inclined to throw precious resources at this. Maybe I'll hand out a master thesis project one day to come up with an estimate of how close bats have to be packed for jamming to become a problem. But I expect you would end up with a "sardines in a tin" packing.

[thank you for your input & good wishes]

This thing needs to be mounted on...

[Eh-Wire]

... the morphing wing gull plane from a few posts back. It could become a serious nuisance worthy of commercial or military exploit.

Re:This thing needs to be mounted on...

[Sylven_1969]

I agree completely, the morphing wing plane guys and these guys seriously need to consider sharing re-search. Although I'm not too sure how similiar the planes wings and movement capabilities compare to bats, I know from watching bats that they are surely very quick and agile hunters in the air. Of course you could probably catch the plane and/or the bat with some good fishnet.

Just don't arm it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fish, Please reenter the water, you have 20 seconds to comply"

"Okay, I'm getting in!"

"Unable to read from Infrared device, abort, retry, ignore?"

"What? Uhh, Abort!! Abort!!"

"Unable to close application, terminate now, or wait another five seconds?"

"Terminate! Stop! Halt! Please, goddamit!"

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[Anonymous Coward]

You make me sick. Killing innocent squirrels.

I for one...

[JonXP]

I, for one, welcome our new robotic homerun hitting overlords.

Re:I for one...

[shuufoxie]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who saw the headline and thought they had created a robot that plays baseball. ^^

Why in the world....

[keilinw]

I applaud their efforts to increase human knowledge regarding SONAR technologies. There are quite a few potential benefits that may arise.

One would hope, however, that we don't start relying too much on SONAR becuase it appears to be of limited functionality, can potentially cause noise pollution, and even alter the migration patters of bats themselves ;) Either that or maybe it would drive dogs and cats crazy.

Well, whatever the case, I'm quite curious to see how far they go. I mean really, the technology is only going to be good at things that reflect sound. Is it going to be good for people avoidance? Tree / shurb avoidance? Maybe.... but then again any addition information is better than none.. that is if it were suplimented with appropriate visual /tactile sensors, etc.

--Matt Wong

Re:Why in the world....

[rolfmueller]

One would hope, however, that we don't start relying too much on SONAR becuase it appears to be of limited functionality, can potentially cause noise pollution, and even alter the migration patters of bats themselves ;) Either that or maybe it would drive dogs and cats crazy.

Don't worry about the noise pollution or the effect on other animals. Ultrasound has a very limited range in air. Because of this, bats can cope with other bats being around and probably don't even need to take any special precautions.

the technology is only going to be good at things that reflect sound.

In air, all "usual" (i.e., not specially prepared) solids and liquids will reflect ultrasound very well. The only problem are flat, "specular" surfaces, where the reflected sound is directed away from the source for shallow grazing angles. So sonar works best with "rough" surfaces or when it moves around in clever way that avoids being confused by the invisiblity of such "mirrors" from certain viewing angles.

Echolocation as a group sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Echolocation as a group sense in animals and robots.

Discuss.

Please, please, please...

[bensafrickingenius]

...tell me these people have been responsible enough to also design a robotic tennis racket, in case that damn bat finds its way into my house?

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[squidfood]

I've had six bats show up in my house over the years...

And we were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert.

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[blue trane]

squirrels can be mischievous...one ran right in my door as i was outside watching him, i had to chase him out. but i wouldn't kill one. unless he was really being annoying and had been duly warned.

Robot bat with ejaculation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would we want that?

great !!!!!!

[amodm]

now, does it run linux ?

Re:great !!!!!!

[rolfmueller]

now, does it run linux ?

Yes, it does run linux.

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[krautcanman]

Funny thing about bats in the kitchen. At work I found a small tupperware of bat heads in the "biological samples only" refrigerator. Must belong to some other lab that use our facilities. Either way, I'd have to say that's the most random thing I've come across yet in my time there.

PS: Mod -1 off topic. I just thought I'd share something random from my otherwise uneventful job.

Christ, Forgive Us !!

[jpiggot]

It all sounds well and good now, but the generations that come after us and suffer the scorched earth will curse us for the invention that brought forth the legions of robotic vampires.

Forgive us, for we know not what we hath wrought.

Related topic / use of sonar

[The Master Control P]

I remember reading a few years ago about a new sonar-like system being tested by the military to locate snipers. A soldier would carry a microphone, recording the sounds as he went. When a gun was test fired, the information was fed into a computer which computationally tracked the motion of the sound waves through a test course back to the point of origin.

It's a very promising system (Someone shoots at you, your eyepiece HUD immediately tells you where he is), but it was totally impractical. IIRC, they needed to have a prebuilt 3-d model of the test range for the program to backtrace the bullet. It also took the simulation hours to backtrace one bullet when run on a supercomputer. The computing power will soon be no problem. The hard part will be to generate a sufficiently accurate 3-d model of downtown Baghdad...

It sounds as if some of the things they are researching here (preprocessing input/output) might have some application. Don't know what became of that sound-backtrace project, though.

Re:Related topic / use of sonar

[tumbleweedsi]

If every soldier in the squad had a mic and a gps and a data link back to the central processor it would be far easier to build up a 3d location of the sniper, inbound jets/choppers or whatever.

But then infantry are expendable so money is not spent on them when it can be spent on big scary black jets which will have a real fear of god impact on the enemy.

Re:Related topic / use of sonar

[Vitriol Angst]

I think they were using some of this "back trace" with gang violence in test areas -- I believe it was even used on that famous sniper (name escapes me, Michael Jackson and TDK maniac have numbed the brain -- I've quit the news, I suppose that was the goal).

There are three components available; infra-red satellite detection (muzzle flash), detecting the bang (I suppose you record all the time, and a sufficient bang says to "mark and keep data"), and location. I was reading that they'd put multiple Mics in a location (at least 3) and triangulate. A model of buildings would help because sound gets bounced, but the ultrasonic frequencies don't. So you detect the lower tone bang, but track the ultrasonic to remove the issue of obstacles (I guess).

I would think it could be done now if say 12 troops in a platoon all had mics and processors. The mic that detects the sound first would get range, and the rest would be used to find the angle and elevation-- this wouldn't need to be too exact; just "it came from over there!" They really need this for an urban setting. But it also makes sense in large cities. There isn't any reason why we couldn't detect and trace any and all explosions or fire arm shots in any city in America.

A quality mic that only stores the last 5 minutes of sound and has a wireless transmitter with say a 1000 yrd range -- maybe 40 to cover a city coupled with aggregators to send blast sounds and data to a central processor could be done fairly cheaply. A satellite could blanket a huge area and look for muzzle flash as well.

Re:Related topic / use of sonar

[zenray]

One point can't locate the source of the sound. It might tell you from which direction it came from and under some conditions that might be good enough. The LA cops have some areas of high crime mapped out and have three microphones in the area linked to a processor and via a triangulation process come up with a source location of gunshot sounds good to about 10 feet.

Re:Related topic / use of sonar

[ma2oliveira]

Greetings,
I sort of recall discussions on using an active sensor network for sniper location. Here's a Google results page for "sniper sensor network location":
http://www.google.com.br/search?q=sensor+network+s niper+location&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&sta rt=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mo zilla:en-US:official
Marco.

sonar in air...

[kgarcia]

Call me crazy...

but isn't "Sonar in Air" called "radar"?

and don't we pretty much have some pretty sophisticated radar systems out there?

or are we talking about some horrible shrieking sounds in the audible spectrum to make this happen?

Re:sonar in air...

[adrianmonk]

Call me crazy... but isn't "Sonar in Air" called "radar"?

Not exactly. Sonar ("SOund Navigation And Ranging") uses sound but radar ("RAdio Detection And Ranging") uses radio.

Re:sonar in air...

[rolfmueller]

Radar uses electromagnetic waves, in-air sonar uses ultrasound. Ultrasound frequencies are by definition above the audible spectrum, so you don't hear them.

Re:sonar in air...

[tumbleweedsi]

Call me crazy...

but isn't "Sonar in Air" called "radar"?

OK, if you insist...

You're crazy!
Radar uses radio and sonar uses sound... they both bounce stuff off other stuff and work out how far it is away by how long it takes to bounce back though.

fu3k?

[Anonymous Coward]

~280MB MPEG of7 of [tuxedoV.org],

What?

[Chris Daniel]

Did someone say E-chocolate?

Rabies

[Anonymous Coward]

Just be glad that you didn't get rabies from either one of them. I've heard of one case where a woman was bit by a bat, and didn't even realize it because the puncture wound was so small/superficial. She died several days later.

FYI: If you see a bat during the *DAY*, it most likely has rabies.

Silly idea after looking at the links.

[BlackHat]

Or more correctly Cillia.

A single (ignore the pair for direction for a moment) detector element is not going to get any accurate (3D) results, no matter how good the post processing.

Also the shape of the ear is minor in comparison to the "array" of information from the messages the individual hairs(cillia) send to the brain. Not saying they're wasting their time, just that it will likely be sub-optimal by design. Also I'd bet the hair pattern(layout) is more important than the over all shape too. But then IANAB* so what do I know.

(*I Am Not A Bat)

Re:Silly idea after looking at the links.

[rolfmueller]

You are correct in pointing out that a single sensor cannot give "good" 3d results; they may be "accurate", but not unambiguous (all points on the surface of a prolate spheroid correspond to the same mouth-to-ear time-of-flight).
The array information from the individual cilia is - in the first place - exclusively a frequency-domain information, because the inner ear splits the incoming signal into its frequency components. The earshape can add a spatial dimension to this, because it can cause the ear to be sensitive in different directions for different frequencies. So it is not a question of "either or", ear shapes and frequency analysis by the cilia work together.

Re:Silly idea after looking at the links.

[BlackHat]

The earshape can add a spatial dimension to this, because it can cause the ear to be sensitive in different directions for different frequencies. So it is not a question of "either or", ear shapes and frequency analysis by the cilia work together.

Thanks for pointing that out, I had not fully thought it out. So FFT-like post processing step(s) would, or could, be effective in simulating most of the function of the cillia. Cool, thanks. Good work so far, keep at it.

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[SMS_Design]

Wow, you are an incredible coward. They are just little bats, and you're a goddamn human being. What do you think they're going to do, clamp onto your face and eat your eyeballs? You freak out each time you see these little creatures that have just wandered into your home.. grow a pair and realize that you are much higher on the food chain.

generalization not true.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever a robot team wants to build an autonomous robot they look at sonar first...

Sonar has a place, but is by no means the first thing that everyone looks at when designing an autonomous robot. I imagine most would like to use cameras, but the complexitys of image analysis put that out of reach(for most), so they look at more simple sensors such as sonar/laser range finders/antennae.

Though all of this depends on the builders skill and the projects needs.

Well mine

[ImaLamer]

Uses frequencies in an already crowded band....

Hmmm..

[Francis85]

Lets get this straighten out.. they made cyborg bats with friggin' radar beams attached to their heads!!

Re:i do agree with one thing - there is more...

[munchymuncher]

There is more than just range or location of objects to map. You could possibly map the density of objects, or even dynamic media like beer, dense air in storms, fluctuating seawater or even semen salinity, or the complex atmospheres on other planets/planetoids using echo location derived technologies. These capabilities come from the fact that sound is a different form of energy wave than EM waves. Sound is a compression of the medium, like air, at certain times, like 50 times per second (the brown noise.) So it is very well suited to detecting changes in matter that other waves can pass right through or simply bounce off the mere surface of. There are also different ways to map objects and their locations. The simple approach would be to send out a sound, listen for it to return, then try to decide how far away was the object from which it reflected. An alternative way of mapping would be perhaps a statistical process. First you send out a sound or just listen to ambient noise and determine how many ways it can change. Then you can fly around while you record what you hear. You also want to record each time you run into an object and all of the acoustic features each object you run into possesses. Eventually, you will have enough data to build a statistical probability or regression or whatever model and a derived algorithm for listening to the environment. By using a listening algorithm tailored for the environment, like xmas2003's Frisbee ridden house, the robot bat can simply fly around and guess when it will hit something. The robot bat can even determine if it is about to hit a Frisbee, a window screen, a tennis racket or whatever weapon the flying mammal hater has deployed. This is probably a lot closer to what a live bat actually does. Rather than draw a map of where the moth is, the bat simply remembers what a moth three feet away sounds like and veers in the direction that sounds better. Of course, the live bat's OS is not Linux but Hunger1.0. Not a very stable platform, but the computational power is fantastic! I don't really know a lot about echo location or sonar, but I play like I do on /. I have also seen statistical mapping used in many similar applications like ground penetrating radar. Statistics is applied in geophysical/seismic mapping. Mechanical failure analysis can be done by listening to vibrations which are just below the audible frequencies. Then there is the Weather Channel. So, if statistical mapping of sonar and echo data is not in use by robots for navigation and targeting today, then it will be soon.

The list of articial nature

[jurt1235]

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.

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[nogginthenog]

Maybe they were someones lunch?

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[hplasm]

Ozzie Osbourne's lunch?

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[SenFo]

Wow! I would have freaked out if I saw a bat in my house.

Have you ever looked into something like an Ultrasonic Pest Repeller? I'm not 100% certain; but, I believe they would work with bats, too. I know for sure that the one my parents have came with an explicit warning to not use the device around pet mice and hamsters.

That's Nothing...

[Legendof_Pedro]

Get back to me when it can fly.

A head that can ecolocate is nothing - we've been using sonar and radar for years.

Last pic

[commodoresloat]

Dude you didn't get rid of him... he's still under that frisbee!

Seriously this reminds me of an apartment I almost rented years ago... it was an attic of a building; there was a guy living there who was moving out in a few weeks and I was about to hand over the money when I noticed a butterfly net near his futon .... Being a smartass I was like, "Hey, are you a lepidopterist?" He said no, no, that's for the bats. Huh? "Oh it's no big deal - they show up every once in a while. You just turn on the radio to confuse their sonar and catch them with this net." OK, then what do I do? The guy picks up a baseball bat... "You hit it a few times with this bat until it stops moving and then you can flush it down the toilet." I almost lost my lunch right there. I wound up renting a room on the first floor -- so I lived in the house but I never ventured up to the attic after that story. I think bats are really cool but I could not imagine having to catch them and kill them in my bedroom on a regular enough basis to keep a net next to my bed.

Credit where it's due...

[Any Web Loco]

http://bash.org/?240849

Obligatory Dave Barry

[lbmouse]

"Robotic Bat Heads" ~ Good name for a rock band

LOOK at the cochlea. Its a tuned port.

[crovira]

With one hair per frequency. Make that one frequency per hair.

Hair damaged? you can't hear that frequency. Lots of hairs damaged? You're deaf, even though the actual receiving equipment may be fine. You can no longer receive input from that hair which makes you deaf to roughly that frequency, +- some percentage around it.

I'm sure that it would be possible to 'grow' silicon cilia to fit into a 'tuned pipe' to give ears to our computers. Then the fun comes with processing.

Detecting direction is simple and can be done with a couple of 'gates' (digital equivalent of a couple of analog devices,) which just detect the phase difference between inputs (a neural net is the simplest way to handle the processing and 'training' consists of placing a sound source on a traveling rail. [Babies can do it long before they are capable of knowing what a source is.])

CPE (cocktail party effect [the ability to pick a voice out of a crowd]) is more involved and does things with frequency matching. (And is a problem with MS sufferers, which is how I learned about it. You would not believe how much richer my ears 'hear' music compared to yours. Of course, if we're in a room with others talking, I get no coherent input.)

Back to physics:

The length of the cilia determine the 'sensitivity' to sound. Short hairs are less sensitive because there is less 'piezo' flexing distance, but longer hairs are more prone to damage (deafening.) There's also more stuff related to the actual mass of the cilia and its relation to motion.

The perception of 'loudness' is a post-processing effect and depends on relative strength of a signal to other signals.

Ask the submarine echo location staff in the navy and you'd be amazed at what they already know on the subject.

One step closer

[BlackCobra43]

To Robot Dracula! The vorld vill tremble! He vill suck your blood! Problem is, when he gets too close to a Window in the daytime he gets a BSOD

Will someone please think of the bats!

[Free_Trial_Thinking]

I was just curious if this technology would be harmful to bats? Would it make them confused or crash into things?

Isn't that the case with sonar where it harms dolphins somehows?

Re:Will someone please think of the bats!

[rolfmueller]

The robot is as harmful to the bats as one bat is to the other. Its sonar beam is pretty narrow, pulsed in time, and has a short range only. A flying bat would get out of its reach within seconds at worst.

The situation with the dolphins and the sonar is different, because sound (of the same frequency) carries much further in water than in air. That and the fact that for electromagnetic waves it is the other way round is the reason why the Navy uses sonar and the Army doesn't.

Re:Will someone please think of the bats!

[Free_Trial_Thinking]

I'm just wondering what would happen if this became a mass produced product, for example putting in on cars to see your blind spot. Would that cause chaos for bats, assuming there were 1000's of these devices per square mile?

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[mikael]

You are also lucky you are in Colorado.

In the UK and in some parts of Europe, it's illegal to injure, kill or otherwise disturb bats while they are breeding.

Being caught can lead to a fine of up to 5000 pounds ($10K US dollars) per bat. A recent court case.

We had bats in our attic too - they were getting in through the gaps in the eaves of the house. For several months, we had always wondered why our cats were going into the room and jumping about. It wasn't until I was sleeping in the room one night, and was woken up to hear a scraping noise above on the wall beside me. I switch on the light and .... there are three bats clinging to the wall and slowly climbing down towards me.....

Tinfoil Hats

[Dareth]

... 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.

Re:Tinfoil Hats

[rolfmueller]

The material of the tinfoil makes not much of a difference, but the shape certainly does. If you come up with a good stealth design, you should be able to fool any monostatic sonar (receiver and emitter close to each other) quite a bit.

Good or bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure If I'm for or against this.
On the one hand, bats are scary.
And yet everyone likes a little head.

We Threw Rocks at 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

We used to throw rocks at 'em at twilight and watch them chase the rocks. (That's what country folk do.)

echolocation sensors?

[webweave]

I was hoping to see a bunch of links to modern linux software for using those cheap Poloroid distance sensors. Imagine waving a sensor a few times to get a picture something like a Sonogram or Diagnostic Ultrasound image. That would be cool.

Scientists need to look at Dolphins

[Vitriol Angst]

A Dolphin (or Porpoise) has a large head filled with fat and nerves. The dimensional space receives echoes. I believe the Dolphin keeps all the sound in 3 dimensions -- never detecting it in two. The nerves within the fat model the wave form shapes directly to the brain.

I've always felt that we should be using ultrasound devices to communicate with dolphins, rather than trying to send them recordings. We think it is the same sound, but our sound comes out of a speaker which is two-dimensional, while the dolphin is sending and receiving sound in 3D.

The point I'm making is, that our 2D receptors for sonar need a lot of processing power to remove extraneous ripples and sound-bouncing. If you were to detect the effect and actual motion of sound passing through a sensitive gelatinous medium (say an aero-gel), any and all origins of sound would be easily apparent. The arc of each wave would be different as well as the direction -- it is many orders of magnitude simpler to find the shape and location of an object making the sound in 3D space then to look at one plane and try to compute anything. You have to separate the sounds by sampling over time and determining the various wave forms making up the resulting jumble.

Anyway, if someone wants to build this--email me and let me get credit on the patent ;-)

Talking to Dolphins would finally be possible. For instance, I hypothesis that the word for fish is a sound picture of a fish -- and of a specific fish -- meaning that any Dolphin would know exactly which fish you were talking about -- like sending a picture that included how healthy a person was. Close as you can get to telepathy and a lot more detailed than language. Humans in this regard, must seem very crude the a Dolphin -- they must wonder how we could have accomplished so many things being as poor in language as we are.

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[Zunni]

Hehe, great site, and great stories.. I think I'm in a pretty bat-free zone but should they venture near, I now know what to do!

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[blincoln]

we had always wondered why our cats were going into the room and jumping about.

Hah. I imagine a flying rodent would be a cat's idea of great fun. Smells like a mouse, flits about like a small bird, add some catnip and it might just be too much to handle altogether.

Re:Tinfoil Hats - Shape Matters

[Dareth]

So if I shape it like the head of a bat, like Batman's cowl, I will appear to be one of their brethren, abeit much larger... maybe they will even worship me as fricking huge bat god... ... Did I mention that I am paranoid and semi-delusional? ... Oh you got that from the comment already... ... Good.

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[ozbon]

Cats chasing bats is one thing. We've got a dog that chases them when we take her out for a walk. Took us ages to realise that was what she was doing...

Blind man uses echo location

[sxmjmae]

I remember seeing/reading about a blind guy who made clicks and sounds and then navigates the world.

The part that impressed me is that while walking down the street he could tell what vehicles where parked on the road... as he walk he said car, car, truck, car, van, red car. (Last one being a joke on his part). He claimed that he noticed that the echoing sound from his walking stick changed slightly. After much trail and error he was able to make a clicking noise and then deciphered the returning echoed sound. I seem to recall that he is teaching his technique to blind people.

Correction

[Chosen Reject]

A more likely reason we have 2 eyes is we were origionally predators. We notice movement and distance well. It helps us hunt. As sight is effectivly passive (we don't have to shine light out of our eyes) it allows us to be more stealthy. While bats use sonar, it's an active sensor. you have to keep making sound to use it. If more predatory animals used sonar to hunt, then more hunted animals would be able to detect it.

Bats are also predators. Sonar seems to work for them.

wait till the military gets ahold of this one

[Anonymous Coward]

up here in canada on the west coast I've heard of many fisherman talking about large US military boats coming though and blasting their sonar and killing a assortment of fish. If this technology is not used carefully we will see all the land animals that use sonar have serious issues.

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[Ihlosi]

Bats are not rodents.

Not so primitive

[Pedrito]

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

What do they base that on? That's just ridiculous. I admit, sonar is a very common choice, but he says it as if robot builders blindly go into sonar first thing always.

I think maybe he went into it without doing any research because he's clearly not aware of some of the impressive prior work done in the field. He's not the first to use ultrasonic imaging. There's been really impressive work going back to the mid to late 90s. This guy, living in his own world, clearly thinks he invented the field.

I mean, they've done some new stuff here, but the field wasn't nearly as primitive as he made it out to be. Hell, back in the mid-90's, 3 other hobbyists and I built a pretty decent 3-d imaging system from slightly modified Polaroid 6500 ranging modules. And we were just hobbyists. I know much more impressive stuff has been done by others in the past 10 years. Hell, back in the early 90s, there was a group doing facial recongition with ultrasonics and neural nets.

I dunno, I'm just not terribly impressed by their work, though I'm jaded a lot by the guy's arrogant "we invented the field" kind of attitude.

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

- good thing my wife didn't see that onebr>
Um... Did anyone see it? What about the others? If you find that frequently bats get into your house and no one else sees them, that may be indicative of some "other" type of problem. Good luck with that!!!

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you think they're going to do, clamp onto your face and eat your eyeballs?

Duh, that's what bats do. What kind of pussy bats do you have where you live?

Mote-based Counter-Sniper System

[MonolithicX]

I think I saw the same thing on a Discovery Channel special. I believe it might have been these guys http://www.xbow.com/ but I could only find information on it in a newletter http://www.xbow.com/General_info/Info_pdf_files/Xb owNewsletter_Q1-05.pdf

Another problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I already have too many real bats getting tangled up in my hair. Why would I want a robotic bat that would inevitably get tangled up in my hair too?

Model Human Hearing

[eestar]

Why don't researchers try to use human sound localization methods. Humans do have an innate ability to detect the localization of sound sources for various directions and distances. In particular, a simple way to detect the locations in the horizontal domain are Interaural Time Delays(ITD) and Interaural Level Delays(ILD), where interaural means between the ears. These are just fancy ways of saying the source location is closest to the ear that hears the loudest sound and hears it first. The other ear will then hear that same sound with some time delay and at a lesser volume. Depending on the length of the time delay and how much the volume of the sound has decreased, we can tell which direction the sound came from. It essentially reduces to a high school geometry problem.

pet bat?

[Mahou]

after learning all about echolocation with this couldnt you make a device with headphones and mount it on a bat and instead of sending out waves and determining location sending fake readings to the bat so that they become remote controlled?

wow a remoter control bat, that would be, like, so awesome, especially with a mini HELLADS laser on it.

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[10am-bedtime]

ah, land sharks and twisted legal counsel...

And yet...

[furiousx]

...the Tigers STILL suck...

Re:Just don't have the robot bat fly into my house

[Tesla Tank]

One word: rabies