This Robot Uses Echolocation to Autonomously Navigate Low-Visibility Environments Like a Bat

You probably remember from elementary school that bats use echolocation to navigate by listening for the echos of their high-pitched chirps. That ability comes in very handy when bats are flying through cramped pitch black caves, or when they’re hunting at night. It would also be very useful for moving around in other low-visibility environments, like a smoky room. At the University of Cincinnati, researchers have taken advantage of that to create a robot that uses echolocation to see in places where normal sensors fail.

The robot—a small rover type—was, of course, heavily inspired by bats’ natural echolocation abilities. But, it doesn’t use traditional ultrasound sensors that you often find in other robots. Instead, it uses a pair of 3D printed microphone “ears” that listen to the echos of ultrasonic chirps that it emits as it navigates. Those ears were even modeled after the unique dish-shaped ears of a leaf-nosed bat.

Being ground-based, the robot only navigates with echolocation two-dimensionally for now. But, the researchers plan on expanding that into three dimensions, making the system suitable for flying drones. The obvious application would be for environments that are obscured by particulates—like finding people in a smoke-filled burning building. In situations where visibility is low and GPS is unreliable, echolocation would be perfect for maintaining accurate mobility.