Mastodawn

🦇🤖 To learn how #bats find tiny #insects on leaves in a crowded #jungle, researchers built a specialized #robot that uses #echolocation just like the real thing.

The experiments with the "robo-bat" arm showed that these #animals don't need complex maps of every leaf. Instead, they use a surprisingly simple and elegant acoustic trick to identify their next meal in total darkness.

👉 https://www.popsci.com/technology/robot-bat-hunting/

#robotics #science #biology #engineering #nature #technology #tech #innovation #discovery #research #biomimicry

A robot bat sheds new light how they hunt in darkness

‘I’m always Team Bat. They always trick me, they always outsmart me.’

Popular Science

Knowledge Zone Nov 19

#KnowledgeByte: #Echolocation is a biological sonar system used by certain animals to navigate and find prey in their environment.

Human echolocation is the ability of humans to use sound waves to perceive their surroundings.

https://knowledgezone.co.in/posts/Human-Echolocation-67322845b0ffe5bd99bd4d48

The vOICe vision BCI 🧠🇪🇺Oct 21

Clinical trial: Wearable #echolocation aids using parametric sound https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT07218991 "The objective of this study is to study a novel device designed to aid patients with impaired vision to safely navigate their environment."

The vOICe vision BCI 🧠🇪🇺Oct 21

Clinical trial: Wearable #echolocation aids using parametric sound clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT072... "The objective of this study is to study a novel device designed to aid patients with impaired vision to safely navigate their environment."

ClinicalTrials.gov

The vOICe vision BCI 🧠🇪🇺Sep 14

Neural and behavioral correlates of evidence accumulation in human click-based #echolocation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... by @haydeegl.bsky.social @echodislocation.bsky.social #neuroscience

Neural and behavioral correlat...

Neural and behavioral correlates of evidence accumulation in human click-based echolocation

Echolocation enables blind individuals to perceive and navigate their environment by emitting clicks and interpreting their returning echoes. While expert blind echolocators demonstrate remarkable spatial accuracy, the behavioral and neural mechanisms supporting the temporal integration of spatial echoacoustic cues remain less explored. Here, we investigated the temporal dynamics of spatial information accumulation in human click-based echolocation using EEG. Blind expert echolocators and novice sighted participants localized virtual spatialized echoes derived from realistic synthesized mouth clicks, with trials presenting trains of 2–11 clicks. Behavioral results showed that blind expert echolocators significantly outperformed sighted controls in spatial localization. For these experts, localization thresholds decreased with more clicks, indicating cumulative integration of spatial cues across repeated samples. EEG decoding analyses revealed that neural representations significantly distinguished echo laterality and predicted overall spatial localization performance from the first click alone. Additionally, brain responses relative to the first click evolved systematically over successive clicks, paralleling psychophysical performance in blind echolocators and providing a possible index of perceptual information accumulation. These findings provide, to our knowledge, the first fine-grained account of temporal neural dynamics underlying click-based echolocation, directly linked to behavioral performance over multiple samples. They reveal how successive echoes are integrated over time into coherent spatial representations. Together, these results advance our understanding of the perceptual and neural mechanisms underlying echolocation and demonstrate adaptive sensory processing in the absence of vision. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. E. Matilda Ziegler Foundation for the Blind, https://ror.org/00zj09521 Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute’s C.V. Starr Fellowship Fund Foundation for Ophthalmology Research and Education International

bioRxiv

The vOICe vision BCI 🧠🇪🇺Sep 14

Neural and behavioral correlates of evidence accumulation in human click-based #echolocation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.30.673202v1 by @echodislocation et al. #neuroscience

Neural and behavioral correlates of evidence accumulation in human click-based echolocation

Echolocation enables blind individuals to perceive and navigate their environment by emitting clicks and interpreting their returning echoes. While expert blind echolocators demonstrate remarkable spatial accuracy, the behavioral and neural mechanisms supporting the temporal integration of spatial echoacoustic cues remain less explored. Here, we investigated the temporal dynamics of spatial information accumulation in human click-based echolocation using EEG. Blind expert echolocators and novice sighted participants localized virtual spatialized echoes derived from realistic synthesized mouth clicks, with trials presenting trains of 2–11 clicks. Behavioral results showed that blind expert echolocators significantly outperformed sighted controls in spatial localization. For these experts, localization thresholds decreased with more clicks, indicating cumulative integration of spatial cues across repeated samples. EEG decoding analyses revealed that neural representations significantly distinguished echo laterality and predicted overall spatial localization performance from the first click alone. Additionally, brain responses relative to the first click evolved systematically over successive clicks, paralleling psychophysical performance in blind echolocators and providing a possible index of perceptual information accumulation. These findings provide, to our knowledge, the first fine-grained account of temporal neural dynamics underlying click-based echolocation, directly linked to behavioral performance over multiple samples. They reveal how successive echoes are integrated over time into coherent spatial representations. Together, these results advance our understanding of the perceptual and neural mechanisms underlying echolocation and demonstrate adaptive sensory processing in the absence of vision. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. E. Matilda Ziegler Foundation for the Blind, https://ror.org/00zj09521 Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute’s C.V. Starr Fellowship Fund Foundation for Ophthalmology Research and Education International

bioRxiv

Colin Purrington Aug 25

Dogbane tiger moth (Cycnia tenera). Like others in the subfamily (Arctiinae), they can jam bat sonar by making high-frequency chirps. I'm not sure of specifics but apparently bats can adjust their sound production to become unjammed. And no doubt, moths have additional countermeasures to deploy. #dogbane #moth #moths #lepidoptera #evolution #insects #nature #bats #echolocation

AlcorNews Aug 17

Des drones copient l’écholocalisation des chauves-souris pour naviguer dans le noir : innovation fascinante ou risque pour la vie privée ?
https://www.innovant.fr/2025/08/14/pour-les-experts-lia-des-drones-copie-le-sonar-des-chauves-souris-cette-vision-ultrasonique-relance-le-debat-sur-la-securite-et-la-vie-privee/
#Space #Science #Innovation #AerospaceEngineering #BatInspiredDrones #Echolocation #PrivacyDebate

Pour les experts « l’IA des drones copie le sonar des chauves-souris » : cette vision ultrasonique relance le débat sur la sécurité et la vie privée - Innovant

Les avancées technologiques transforment la manière dont les machines interagissent avec leur environnement. Grâce à une innovation inspirée directement des chauves-souris, les drones et robots peuvent désormais naviguer dans des conditions extrêmes d'obscurité ou de visibilité réduite. Cette technologie, développée par des chercheurs de l'université du Michigan, utilise l'écholocalisation assistée par intelligence artificielle pour détecter

Innovant - L'actualité des innovations

The vOICe vision BCI 🧠🇪🇺Jul 9, 2025

For dolphins, #echolocation may be more like 'touching' than 'seeing' https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/for-dolphins-echolocation-may-be-more-like-touching-than-seeing/ (archived at https://archive.ph/jCFj8) Dolphins seem to "feel" their way across the sea with narrow, sweeping beams of sonar

This professor is training the public to echolocate https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/learning-human-echolocation-with-a-neuroscientist/ (archived at https://archive.ph/7EKXK) Neuroscientist Lore Thaler speaks about her efforts to make #echolocation training more accessible

For Dolphins, Echolocation May Be More Like ‘Touching’ Than ‘Seeing’

Dolphins seem to “feel” their way across the sea with narrow, sweeping beams of sonar

Scientific American

Lukas VFN 🇪🇺Apr 3, 2025

Bats' echolocation strategy: How dense colonies avoid mid-air collisions
https://phys.org/news/2025-03-echolocation-strategy-dense-colonies-mid.html paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2407810122

"When exiting the cave, #bats experience a cacophony of calls, with 94% of echolocations being jammed. Yet, within five seconds of leaving the cave, bats significantly reduced the #echolocation jamming... they fanned out and they emitted shorter and weaker calls at higher frequency... to gain detailed information about their near neighbors... to avoid collisions."

Bats' echolocation strategy: How dense colonies avoid mid-air collisions

Aya Goldshtein, Omer Mazar, and Yossi Yovel have spent many evenings standing outside bat caves. Even so, seeing thousands of bats erupting out of a cave and flapping into the night, sometimes in densities so high that they appear liquid, astounds the scientists every time. But until recently, the bat biologists were even more baffled by what they didn't see.

Phys.org