Novel Dynamic Paradigms for Wave Sensing Inspired by Bat Biosonar

目前的声纳和雷达技术所遵循的方法似乎与蝙蝠生物声纳中观察到的方法有着根本的不同：工程系统依赖于大量的发射器和接收器元件，每个元件都具有相当简单的特性，而蝙蝠生物声纳则使用非常少量的复杂发射器和接收器。蝙蝠发射它们的超声波脉冲，并使用挡板形状接收回波，这些挡板形状可以与扩音器和喇叭天线进行第一近似比较。然而，这些形状不仅在几何上比它们的技术同行复杂得多，而且它们还具有独特的动态维度，因为它们在类似于动物超声波脉冲持续时间的时间尺度上改变它们的形状。与此同时，蝙蝠生物声纳在处理结构丰富的自然环境方面似乎远远上级工程系统。因此，发展的动态尺寸在蝙蝠生物声纳中的作用的理解可能会导致新的动态传感范式，可以提高性能的声纳，雷达，和相关的技术sensing models.This研究将重现和调查的动态功能在生物声纳的某些蝙蝠物种的生物声纳系统中的仿生原型声纳。要测试的主要基本假设是，这些挡板形状的变形增加了一个动态的维度，这个生物传感系统，可以用来（i）扩大系统的一般编码能力的感官信息，（ii）增强某些显着的特征的编码，（iii）适应不同的传感场景的系统。如果是这样的话，蝙蝠生物声纳的不寻常的动态尺寸可能是蝙蝠上级能力背后的一个关键因素，以满足在复杂的自然环境中基于非常吝啬的感官输入导航的感官需求。这一假设将通过构建一个仿生声纳系统，将采用挡板形状的发射以及接收，可以改变它们的形状与各自的衍射过程同步进行调查。仿生感觉系统将用于研究自然生物声纳传感任务中感觉信息的动态编码。这些实验的结果将使用数值模拟和信息理论的方法来处理自然生物声纳场景的随机性和由此产生的回波信号进行分析。

Current technical sonar and radar technology follows an approach that appears to be fundamentally different from what can be observed in bat biosonar: Whereas engineered systems rely on large numbers of emitter and receiver elements that each have rather simple characteristics, bat biosonar operates with a very small number of intricate emitters and receivers. Bats emit their ultrasonic pulses and receive the echoes using baffle shapes that can be compared to megaphones and horn antennas to a first approximation. However, these shapes are not only geometrically much more complicated than their technical peers, they can also have a unique dynamic dimension in that they change their shapes on time scales that are similar to the duration of the animals' ultrasonic pulses. At the same time, bat biosonar appears to be far superior to engineered systems in dealing with structure-rich natural environments. Hence, developing an understanding of the role that the dynamic dimension plays in bat biosonar could lead to novel dynamic sensing paradigms that could improve the performance of sonar, radar, and related technical sensing modalities.This research will reproduce and investigate dynamic features seen in biosonar the biosonar system of certain bat species in a biomimetic prototype sonar. The principal underlying hypotheses to be tested is that the deformations of these baffle shapes add a dynamic dimension to this biological sensing system that could be used to (i) enlarge the system's general coding capacity for sensory information, (ii) enhance the encoding of certain salient features, (iii) adapt the system to different sensing scenarios. If this is the case, the unusual dynamic dimension of bat biosonar could be a key factor behind the superior ability of bats to meet the sensory needs for navigation in complex natural environments based on a very parsimonious sensory input. This hypothesis will be investigated by constructing a biomimetic sonar system that will employ baffle shape for emission as well as reception that can change their shapes in synchrony with the respective diffraction processes. The biomimetic sensory system will be used to investigate the dynamic encoding of sensory information in natural biosonar sensing tasks. The results of these experiments will be analyzed using numerical simulations and information-theoretic methods to deal with the random nature of natural biosonar scenes and the resulting echo signals.