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You, Too, Can Learn Echolocation
The Narrative Fallacy writes "Wired reports that with just a few weeks of training, you can learn to 'see' objects in the dark using echolocation the same way dolphins and bats do. Acoustic expert Juan Antonio Martinez at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain has developed a system to teach people how to use echolocation, a skill that could be particularly useful for the blind and for people who work under dark or smoky conditions, like firefighters — or cat burglars. 'Two hours per day for a couple of weeks are enough to distinguish whether you have an object in front of you,' says Martinez. 'Within another couple weeks you can tell the difference between trees and pavement.' To master the art of echolocation, you can begin by making the typical 'sh' sound used to make someone be quiet. Moving a pen in front of the mouth can be noticed right away similar to the phenomenon when traveling in a car with the windows down, which makes it possible to 'hear' gaps in the verge of the road. The next level is to learn how to master 'palate clicks,' special clicks with your tongue and palate that are better than other sounds because they can be made in a uniform way, work at a lower intensity, and don't get drowned out by ambient noise. With the palate click you can learn to recognize slight changes in the way the clicks sound depending on what objects are nearby. 'For all of us in general, this would be a new way of perceiving the world,' says Martinez."
I believe Ripley's Believe It or Not, the TV show, already did a story on people who could do this.
This seems extremely unlikely, and most probably pseudoscience.
I noticed I unconsciouly tongue-click when looking for stuff. Shrug.
"Now where did I put it <click> <click> <click>"
Shook head, looked at calendar....
Nope. Wrong date...
Got to be true!
.
"The avalanche has already started. It's too late for the pebbles to vote." - Kosh
Before the unfortunate accident where I was blinded by a radioactive cylinder that fell off a truck, I could not echolocate. But now I am a successful lawyer by day and a blind but superpowered crimefighter by night. You too can have superpowers but there is a sacrifice to be made. You must avoid Windows.
This is exactly what I've been looking for: Something else to do while I'm sitting alone in the dark.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Yes, sneaking around the dark house at night screaming at the walls to find your way around. The epitome of stealth!
...you insensitive clod. ...and one can't hear much in a working structure fire other than one's SCBA, the sounds of the fire, and your buddy on the hoseline.
Which is why we have flashlights and IR cameras mounted on our helmets.
Echolocation can be learned, just not applied in every low-light environment.
... or he would echolocate the dog, and nothing else. When she hears "ssh" noises, she starts barking defensively to scare off intruders. (The hissy reptilian character of "ssh" probably doesn't help in general.)
So if I had anything to add here, it would be: if it's possible at all that You, Too, Can Learn Echolocation, it's certainly not going to be possible within earshot of my stupid dog.
While I am not sure I could pull off flying at night, I know I could easily use it to avoid walking into walls at night... I've done it. It's far from a big deal. The method of sound generation I used was snapping my fingers, though, and not clicking my mouth which I think would confuse my ears even more since my mouth is connected to my ears. But repeatedly snapping my fingers around my head while stepping forward allowed me to appreciate the changes in acoustics well enough to know where walls and other large objects were. On the other hand, it's not quite good enough to avoid stepping on toys left out by my two year old.
The picture we get from such a technique is no picture at all. To create a picture, we would need a dense array of ears of great sensitivity not unlike a retina. At best you can sense that something is there and perhaps how solid it may be. After all, a curtain would mask echoes while walls do a nice job of bouncing the signals.
Still, I am quite certain that blind people already do this without thinking about it. While they may not intentionally send out "pings" in the form of clicks or snaps, they quite likely hear other signals such as the brush of their feet on the carpet, the knock of their feet on the floor or even the rustling of their clothes or the sound of the air flowing from the HVAC system. All of these things generate enough noise signal the allow the notice of the change of acoustic feedback as one to detect changes in the surroundings.
This would be utterly useless for firefighters as they all wear SCBA which requires a full face mask. Further more your ability to hear those clicks are again reduced by gear over your ears, radio chatter and the often very dense smoke around you soaks up large volumes of noise.
This would take serious adaptation to make it even remotely feasible for someone in that scenario. If you're on a hose crew you can just outright forget it all together.
Well, they've already been shown to masturbate, so why not echolocate, too?
Good that lights were invented, even portable ones ...
- Not everyone wants to become a bat.
I remember reading a while ago that Delta Blues musician Blind Willie McTell could do this, I always assumed that it was just another weird blues legend, but I'm absolutely stunned to find that it might have been true.
Maybe Robert Johnson really did sell his soul to the Devil.
2 clicks with a delay work really well for calling the cat to come to me anywhere in the house. I use the same delay between the front paws and the hind legs landing as the cat jumps down.
I clearly remember watching a BBC documentary about a blind young man who would do 'palate clicks' - he could discern cars and rubbish bins and other obstacles and preferred it instead of his stick.
Science Daily mentions 'trial and error' that others have used to make it work for them: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090630075445.htm
Who was blind had a documentary about him (before he passed,MHRIP) called
Extraordinary People - The boy who sees without eyes
truly amazing, but then is it ? he learned this from an early age and didnt think it was anything special same as most of us take seeing light reflected off objects for granted
Iam more in awe of programmers who are blind (like this guy, now that takes a special kind of mind.
Of course actually knowing the answer to the question itself may not help address the philosophical issues raised by the question.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Instead of relying on sound made from ones own mouth, why not rely on a simple emitter around your neck making the clicks for you? sounds silly but resolution would become a problem pretty quick.
still, very cool.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
...you insensitive clod. ...and screeching while stealing stuff is generally considered a bad idea in my profession.
Did anyone else read the headline as 'chocolateion? Mmmm, chocolate ion!
:)
Why can't we have more "Stuff That Matters" articles on chocolate?
read Slashdot on LCD by using Echolocation....never success yet, and found that listen to the RSS clip read aloud by the robotic overload works much better.
There's a rather more informative article about it here.
I wonder how many people started shhh'ing and hissing and clicking when they read this story, would've been funny when u walk past a cubicle and someone doing that :p
imagine when you have 10 people in a room doing that, how can u filter out that static?
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
Our hearing systems are already highly tuned at identifying our environment through the character of existing sound environments (reverberation for example) - for example, it's fairly trivial to indentify if an audio recording was made in a room or outdoors.
Barry Blesser wrote the book Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture where he discusses the ability of people to interact with their environment just by relying on our ears alone. He describes an experiment where students are told to walk toward a wall with their eyes close, and to stop just short of the wall (without looking) and most students could do it without training, and by just relying on the ambient sounds and the sounds of their footsteps.
The book also describes a group of blind teenagers who mountain bike by using their ears to "see." (click on the link above).
We have the ability, we just don't think about it.
I'm pretty sure everyone has at least some subconscious awareness of their environment based on echoes. I recall one time where I walked into a room in my house and stopped dead because the echoes of my footfalls were so strange; the room had been cleared of all the junk that normally cluttered it. If you pay attention you will notice how the sound of your steps or of your voice changes as you move about.
Tons of blind people use clickers as they walk around. Not always, because it attracts attention.
That is actually the secondary usefulness of a cane (after visibility). You can make tappy-sounds without attracting undue attention.
It's easy. All it takes is a few hundred thousand years and some careful breeding programs.
What about chirping instead of clicking? Clicking is good because it's short, but because it's short it's low powered, whereas if you chirp then you have more power coming out. I wonder how that'd work out for human echolocation too.
You just got troll'd!
Ran into this working on a paper once.
http://www.arl.nus.edu.sg/web/research/romanis
Fascinating idea, now if only air would transmit the higher frequencies better...
I'm always clicking away as I stumble downstairs and don't want to wake up the wife and kids.
This is my sig.
I think if you wanted to, you could just project something onto the mask using a sort of a portable imaging system.
This is my sig.
You too can have superpowers but there is a sacrifice to be made. You must avoid Windows.
Is that you, Steve Jobs?
Ben Underwood did it.
I'm a climber and I can relate this story of a mountain guide I know who used a whistle to navigate on a glacier while in a full whiteout. He knew more or less the topography of the cliffs nearby and would blow short whistles, time the echo and estimate the distance to the various cliffs while continuing to walk with his clients. It was in the time before the GPSes, but those aren't very accurate on mountains anyway.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Polo
I'm unusually sensitive to white noise, and I can hear the echo of the noise off of the walls and use it to help me move around in a dark house. Wide open spaces sound tinnier somehow, while a wall muffles the noise.
I remember watching a show on discovery about this many years ago, they'd have special clickers in their hand that sound like a bottle cap with the tampering pop up depressed. They showed off blind people walking without poles, identifying object around them. And some people riding bikes too! Even a live demonstration of a man who has never used the method before navigating an unfamiliar room just be clicks.
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