By Nitin Sanket
Publication Date: 2026-03-27 19:00:00
To help small flying robots navigate in the dark and other low-visibility environments, my colleagues and I developed an ultrasound-based sensing system inspired by bat echolocation.
Current robots rely heavily on cameras or light detection and ranging, known as lidar, or both. However, these sensors fail in visually difficult conditions such as smoke, fog, dust, snow or complete darkness.
I am a scientific engineer developing bio-inspired microrobots. To solve this challenge, my research team studied nature’s experts for navigating in low visibility conditions: bats. They thrive in dark, damp and dusty caves and can use echolocation to detect obstacles as thin as a human hair while weighing just two paper clips. They emit sound waves and listen for faint echoes reflected from objects.
However, activating these sensors in flying robots is extremely difficult because propellers generate a lot of noise. It’s a bit like trying to listen to your friend while a jet engine…
