Bat Bot

Researchers at the CIRCE (Chiroptera Inspired Robotic CEphaloid) Project are working on a biomimetic sonar head, aka BatBot. Their work includes investigating biosonar antennae (ears) as well as constructing a physical system (pic above) that uses sonar in a bat-like way. From their website:

The goal of CIRCE project is to reproduce, at a functional level, the biosonar system of bats by constructing a bionic bat head that can then be used to systematically investigate how the world is not just perceived but actively explored by bats. This bionic bat head will be of similar size to a real bat head to reproduce the relevant physics and consist of an emission/reception system capable of generating/processing bat vocalizations in real-time, a multi-degree of freedom mechanical system to allow realistic pinnae movement and shape control. Constructing the bionic head itself is one objective but a second objective is to gain more insight into neural sensory-data encoding from using the head in biosonar tasks routinely executed by bats.

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