From bats to drone: A Bio-Inspired SONAR System for Autonomous Flying Drones

Bats accomplish various navigation tasks, such as prey pursuit and obstacle avoidance in complex environments, using simple active sonar equipped with a single transmitter and two receivers. Their bio-sonar capabilities are optimized to aerial navigation and have shown that simple active sonar systems have the potential to be flexible in response to uncontrolled environments. In this study, an active sonar system is proposed for drones equipped with a single transmitter and two receivers, inspired by echolocating bats. This is the world’s first study to accomplish the autonomous avoidance flights with bat-compliant active sonar design. Our advanced sonar platform can emit broadband FM pulse as well as echolocation pulses by utilizing a thermoacoustic device (thermophone), enhancing the clutter noise robustness against saturated flight noise. Our solution provides not only a validation tool for echolocation researchers, but an additional option beyond visible cameras for autonomous robotics research.