I am Batman: people could learn to use bat echolocation techniques

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-05-06 04:00

International

Na na na na na na na na Batman! In a technique inspired by bats’ echolocation abilities, international researchers have found people can learn to distinguish rotating objects from the way their echo sounds. The team recruited 15 sighted people with no experience of echolocation, and gave them android tablets that emit buzzing signals from a speaker when tapped - mimicking the signals emitted by bats for echolocation just before capturing their prey. They found people seemed to be able to identify a rotating object, using time-varying patterns according to echo intensity, timbre (the ‘character’ or ‘quality’ of a sound) and pitch from different angles. The next step is to let Batman know, since Daredevil seems to already have this figured out.

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Journal/
conference: PLOS One

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Japan

Funder: This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP18J01429 (Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows) to MS. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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