Bats use sound to map their environment. They emit sounds and their brains process the received echoes. Using this sense, which is called echolocation, bats succeed at one of the hardest problems in robotics—the need to move in an unfamiliar environment and map it. Many studies have tried explaining how bats do this, and we decided to build the Robat—a robot that navigates the world and builds a map using sound. The Robat has a speaker that produces sounds, and it has two ear-like microphones, to receive echoes. The "brain" of the Robat is a computer that processes the echoes, estimates the locations of objects in the environment, and stores a constantly updated map. The Robat can avoid obstacles and even identify some objects. The Robat moves on the ground using wheels and, in the future, we aspire to make it a tiny, flying, bat-like robot.

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Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2020.00007