“Bat” flying robot

Directly inspired by bats

A group of researchers in the United States created a palm-sized drone, capable of navigating in extreme environments, such as smoke, fog and total darkness, using only ultrasound and artificial intelligence, directly inspired by bats. Instead of relying on cameras, radar, or liar, this drone uses two small ultrasonic sensors to listen to the environment around it.

It emits sound waves and interprets the echo that returns, identifying obstacles, distances and possible paths. All this happens with almost no processing, while traditional drones depend on heavy, expensive and energy-consuming systems, this model was designed to be light, efficient and independent, the result is a much simpler, but surprisingly functional system.

The drone measures 15 cm wide, weighs approximately half a kilo and was designed to solve one of the main problems of this type of navigation and the noise of its own propellers. The researchers included an acoustic shield, allowing the drone to hear echoes from the environment more clearly. The system was trained with deep learning to recognize subtle echo patterns, interpreting the information in a similar way to bat echolocation.

The most interesting thing is that this idea of ​​learning from nature is not only happening in laboratories or advanced research, it is already being applied in places that almost no one imagines.