Robat the robot mimics bats, using sound alone to navigate
Robat the robot mimics bats, using sound alone to
navigate
Robot + bat = a new bot that uses an echo-based sonar
system to get around and map new surroundings.
BY LESLIE KATZ SEPTEMBER 10, 2018 3:41 PM PDT
Bats have taught roboticists a thing or two.
Meet Robat.
It's a fully autonomous terrestrial robot that gets
around by emitting audio and analyzing the returning echoes, much like bats do,
to generate an accurate map of a space. It shows "great potential"
for the use of sound in future robotics applications, its creators say.
Unlike Bat Bot, a winged robot inspired by bat movements,
this little wheeled robot out of Tel Aviv University looks nothing like a bat.
But it acts like one. An ultrasonic speaker mimics the bat's mouth, emitting
frequency modulated chirps at a typical bat rate. Two ultrasonic microphones
mimic its ears.
"Unlike the narrow-band signals typically used in
robotic applications, the bat's wide-band signals provide ample spatial
information allowing it to localize multiple reflectors within a single
beam," reads a study on Robat published in the journal PLOS Computational
Biology. "This is the approach we aimed to test and mimic in this
study."
This isn't the first time researchers have used airborne
sounds to map and move through spaces, nor is it the first time they've used
biomimetic sonar to do so.
But "our Robat is the first fully autonomous,
bat-like biorobot that moves through a novel environment while mapping it
solely based on echo information," said grad student Itamar Eliakim, part
of a team of engineers, zoologists and neuroscientists who designed and built
Robat.
In experiments, Robat successfully delineated the borders
of objects it encountered in a large outdoor space, moved around those objects
and classified them (plant or non-plant) using a neural network. It was able to
create a real-time map of its environment that included spatial information
about objects' size and orientation and then wirelessly transmit that map via
antennae mounted in the back.
An echo-based navigation system like this, could,
theoretically, hold promise for a robot tasked with mapping an unfamiliar space
like a disaster recovery area or terrain that needs to scoped by the military.
Or even just bots that vacuum floors.
Not surprisingly, Robat moves much slower than a real
bat, at least in this iteration, stopping for about 30 seconds every 1.6 feet
(half meter) to acquire echoes. Also not surprisingly, it doesn't yet hang from
rafters.
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