A robotic head of bats capable of transmitting and detect ultrasound in the band of frequencies used by bats in the real world will give an important impetus to research in the field of echolocation. “Bat – Bot “, developed under the project CIRCE of the IST (Information Society Technologies) may also stir ears, technique often used by these animals to modulate the characteristics of the echo.
CIRCE developed the Bat-Bot to mimic more closely at the amazing qualities of echolocation in bats. “The sonar in water is an area controlled, but studies on a sonar air are much less advanced,” says dr. Herbert Parmesans, who heads the laboratory of active perception of the University of Antwerp and CIRCE coordinating the project. “Wherever roboticiens want to build an autonomous robot, they deal primarily the sonar, but they quickly encounter problems due to the nature too simplistic devices of commerce, and then spend the visual systems or laser. We hope that our research on the bat robotic systems will lead to more sophisticated sonar useful for robot navigation and other applications, “he says.
One of those potential applications could be identifying plants by echolocation. Continue reading →