• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Sunday, August 3, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News

Researcher uses bat-inspired design to develop new approach to sound location

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
April 15, 2021
in Science News
Reading Time: 4 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

IMAGE

Credit: Virginia Tech

Inspired by the workings of a bat’s ear, Rolf Mueller, a professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech, has created bio-inspired technology that determines the location of a sound’s origin.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buFM5KkAnEo

Mueller’s development works from a simpler and more accurate model of sound location than previous approaches, which have traditionally been modeled after the human ear. His work marks the first new insight for determining sound location in 50 years.

The findings were published in Nature Machine Intelligence by Mueller and a former Ph.D. student, lead author Xiaoyan Yin.

“I have long admired bats for their uncanny ability to navigate complex natural environments based on ultrasound and suspected that the unusual mobility of the animal’s ears might have something to do with this,” said Mueller.

A new model for sound location

Bats navigate as they fly by using echolocation, determining how close an object is by continuously emitting sounds and listening to the echoes. Ultrasonic calls are emitted from the bat’s mouth or nose, bouncing off the elements of its environment and returning as an echo. They also gain information from ambient sounds. Comparing sounds to determine their origin is called the Doppler effect.

The Doppler effect works differently in human ears. A 1907 discovery showed that humans can find location by virtue of having two ears, receivers that relay sound data to the brain for processing. Operating on two or more receivers makes it possible to tell the direction of sounds that contain only one frequency, and would be familiar to anyone who has heard the sound of a car horn as it passes. The horn is one frequency, and the ears work together with the brain to build a map of where the car is going.

A 1967 discovery then showed that when the number of receivers is reduced down to one, a single human ear can find the location of sounds if different frequencies are encountered. In the case of the passing car, this might be the car horn paired with the roaring of the car’s engine.

According to Mueller, the workings of the human ear have inspired past approaches to pinpointing sound location, which have used pressure receivers, such as microphones, paired with the ability to either collect multiple frequencies or use multiple receivers. Building on a career of research with bats, Mueller knew that their ears were much more versatile sound receivers than the human ear. This prompted his team to pursue the objective of a single frequency and a single receiver instead of multiple receivers or frequencies.

Creating the ear

As they worked from the one-receiver, one-frequency model, Mueller’s team sought to replicate a bat’s ability to move their ears.

They created a soft synthetic ear inspired by horseshoe and Old-World leaf-nosed bats and attached it to a string and a simple motor, timed to make the ear flutter at the same time it received an incoming sound. These particular bats have ears that enable a complex transformation of sound waves, so nature’s ready-made design was a logical choice. That transformation starts with the shape of the outer ear, called the pinna, which uses the movement of the ear as it receives sounds to create multiple shapes for reception which channel the sounds into the ear canal.

The biggest challenge Yin and Mueller faced with their single-receiver, single-frequency model was interpreting the incoming signals. How do you turn incoming sound waves into data that is readable and interpretable?

The team placed the ear above a microphone, creating a mechanism similar to that of a bat. The fast motions of the fluttering pinna created Doppler shift signatures that were clearly related to the direction of the source, but not easily interpretable because of the complexity of the patterns. To deal with this, Yin and Mueller engaged a deep neural network: a machine-learning approach that mimics the many layers processing found in the brain. They implemented such a network on a computer and trained it to provide the source direction associated with each received echo.

To test the performance of the system consisting of the ear and machine learning, they mounted the ear on a rotating rig that also included a laser pointer. Sounds were then emitted from a loudspeaker that was placed in different directions relative to the ear.

Once the direction of the sound was determined, the control computer would rotate the rig so that the laser pointer hit a target attached to the loudspeaker, pinpointing location within half a degree. Human hearing typically determines location within 9 degrees with working with two ears, and the best technology has achieved location within 7.5 degrees.

“The capabilities are completely beyond what is currently in the reach of technology, and yet all this is achieved with much less effort,” said Mueller. “Our hope is to bring reliable and capable autonomy to complex outdoor environments, including precision agriculture and forestry; environmental surveillance, such as biodiversity monitoring; as well as defense and security-related applications.”

###

Media Contact
Emily Roediger
[email protected]

Original Source

https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2021/04/me-research-batear.html

Tags: BiologyBiotechnologyMechanical EngineeringTechnology TransferTechnology/Engineering/Computer Science
Share12Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

blank

Expanded Subventricular Zone Aids Postnatal Interneuron Migration

August 3, 2025
blank

Bipolar-Barrier Tunnels Boost Mid-Wave Infrared Detection

August 3, 2025

Micro- and Nanoplastics Threaten Early-Life Health: Risks

August 3, 2025

PI-RADS v2.1 Plus Amide Transfer Boosts Detection

August 3, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • Blind to the Burn

    Overlooked Dangers: Debunking Common Myths About Skin Cancer Risk in the U.S.

    60 shares
    Share 24 Tweet 15
  • Neuropsychiatric Risks Linked to COVID-19 Revealed

    52 shares
    Share 21 Tweet 13
  • Dr. Miriam Merad Honored with French Knighthood for Groundbreaking Contributions to Science and Medicine

    46 shares
    Share 18 Tweet 12
  • Study Reveals Beta-HPV Directly Causes Skin Cancer in Immunocompromised Individuals

    38 shares
    Share 15 Tweet 10

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Expanded Subventricular Zone Aids Postnatal Interneuron Migration

Bipolar-Barrier Tunnels Boost Mid-Wave Infrared Detection

Micro- and Nanoplastics Threaten Early-Life Health: Risks

  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.