Designing artificial ears for animat echolocation

Abstract

This work presents a plausible sound propagation model that can be applied to bat pinna design for echolocating animats. Previous work on articial pinnae addressed the problem of phase cancellation in multi-reector systems. An acoustic model inspired in a physical model of sound diraction and reections in the human concha, which can be scaled up to more complex surfaces, is presented. Experiments are performed in simulation as well as in the real world. RoBat, a biomimetic sonarhead mounted on a mobile robot, is used for the real world experiments. The results obtained support the plausibility of our acoustic model. A performance analysis of the reector system with respect to the previous work is also given. Promising further work directions are also proposed. 1. Introduction Bats are very dynamic creatures; while ying they move their wings, head, pinnae and the nose or mouth whenever they emit. They can be divided into two broad non-taxonomic groups: broadband ...