These LiDAR Glasses Let You “See” Like a Dolphin

Dolphins are amazing creatures, able to travel through the water with a grace and speed, and see their surroundings not only visually, but using echolocation. Andrew Thaler, who describes himself as someone who “builds weird things,” wondered if he could make a device that lets humans “see” the way dolphins do, and set out to create one that would use clicks to indicate distance to an obstacle.

His first choice was the near-ubiquitous ultrasonic sensors seen on many microcontroller projects, but he found them to have too short of a range. Instead he selected a LiDAR system, that while doesn’t actually send out audio signals like a dolphin, gives a much longer range at 12m. When interfaced with an Arduino Uno, he was able to produce the desired clicking sound for distance indication.

Thaler’s write-up notes that dolphins don’t actually have external ears, but instead hear through bone transmission. Following along with its marine mammal inspiration, he turned to bone conduction headphones for audio transmission instead of normal earbuds. To house everything, he built a custom glasses frame for the device using a laser cutter. You can find the mechanical design on Thingiverse, along with code and a bill of materials on GitHub if you’d like to try your hand at making one of these “DolphinView” gadgets yourself!

[h/t: The Verge]