Lecture “Echolocation Techniques of Bats and Blind Humans Can Improve Robot Sensing”

Sonar (SOund NAvigation and Ranging) is a sensing modality that extracts environmental features from echoes. Conventional sonars detect only the first echo to give the range of the nearest reflector. Biomimetic sonars apply techniques employed by bats to extract additional information. This talk describes echo processing that produces cognitive maps similar to those formed through echolocation by blind humans.