You, Too, Can Learn Echolocation 133
The Narrative Fallacy writes "Wired reports that with just a few weeks of training, you can learn to 'see' objects in the dark using echolocation the same way dolphins and bats do. Acoustic expert Juan Antonio Martinez at the University of Alcalá de Henares in Spain has developed a system to teach people how to use echolocation, a skill that could be particularly useful for the blind and for people who work under dark or smoky conditions, like firefighters — or cat burglars. 'Two hours per day for a couple of weeks are enough to distinguish whether you have an object in front of you,' says Martinez. 'Within another couple weeks you can tell the difference between trees and pavement.' To master the art of echolocation, you can begin by making the typical 'sh' sound used to make someone be quiet. Moving a pen in front of the mouth can be noticed right away similar to the phenomenon when traveling in a car with the windows down, which makes it possible to 'hear' gaps in the verge of the road. The next level is to learn how to master 'palate clicks,' special clicks with your tongue and palate that are better than other sounds because they can be made in a uniform way, work at a lower intensity, and don't get drowned out by ambient noise. With the palate click you can learn to recognize slight changes in the way the clicks sound depending on what objects are nearby. 'For all of us in general, this would be a new way of perceiving the world,' says Martinez."
No duh (Score:1, Informative)
I believe Ripley's Believe It or Not, the TV show, already did a story on people who could do this.
Re:No duh (Score:5, Informative)
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I read about this about 40 years ago. I've practiced it a little, myself, and I've always assumed that blind people used the technique all the time. I'm surprised that anyone considers this new.
Incidentally, for near-distance location, a hiss works better than 'shh'.
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Actually an earlier and probably more impressive example would be the case of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Holman [wikipedia.org] who in the early and mid 19th century travelled around the world using echolocation.
Re:No duh (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's also been done for a while.
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I'm not sure if this is the boy you're referring to, but here [youtube.com] is a documentary about a young boy named Ben Underwood [wikipedia.org] who is blind and has taught himself echo location [wikipedia.org]. It is pretty amazing.
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Who? What did he do?
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Wrote books about whisky and beer.
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As a result of which he is more or less completely responsible for the recent popularity (in America) of micro-brews and distinctive beers. Before that, it had been Clydesdale piss for some time.
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American beer is anything but? I had experienced warm pisswater, cold pisswater, ice brewed pisswater, and as I started exploring the world of beer, I found myself very content with a variety of European beers. There's something to say for a beer that you can eat with a fork, that you don't piss out, but shit out as a nasty tar just as the reminder to you of how good it was. :)
I did get beyond the taste of American beer to find out that I can drink it like water, and while ne
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American beer is anything but? I had experienced warm pisswater, cold pisswater, ice brewed pisswater, and as I started exploring the world of beer, I found myself very content with a variety of European beers. There's something to say for a beer that you can eat with a fork, that you don't piss out, but shit out as a nasty tar just as the reminder to you of how good it was. :)
There are a lot of great craft brewed American beers. The corporate crap is still crap.
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It's going to be real fucking useful on the internet. This is an idea whose time has come and gone.
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click click shhh snap
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Right. On top of that, the magic bean we traded it all for - the internet - isn't even real. You can't hug an internet. We're fucked.
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the internet isn't even real. You can't hug an internet. We're fucked.
Or, more to the point, you aren't.
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Can one hug an activity?
I know my responce is a little bit too serious, but for the love of everything that's holy; the internet is not a place (I read it on the internet), but it's a medium!
That way we can shut those dead-tree-media (news papers) readers up. "Nah, you just read it on the internet so it's not true." -"Your newspaper is 'on' the internet too, so than your newspaper is wrong too? The internet is a medium, just like that collection of dead trees and ink you'r holding right now".
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I bet what you really remembered was the position of objects you saw when there was light. The subliminal cues your senses provided were more than enough to reconstruct the whole placement memory.
Re:No duh (Score:5, Interesting)
I've navigated my entire house in pitch blackness. Ever tried to find a flashlight when the power goes out, it's pouring rain outside, at night (no stars, moon, or other ambient light)? Footsteps on wood floors are interesting, even without shoes. I remembered most of my environment, but could hear if I was going to miss a doorway by a few inches (or feet). Constant calls from a known location (like, the wife yelling "Did you find a flashlight yet!") helped anchor my distance and relative angle, and added to the echos to hear. Things like couches deadened the echo. I found it easier to close my eyes while I was doing it, even though it didn't matter because I couldn't see anyways.
Most of the time was environment recognition. I knew something should be at such a distance ahead of me. Not magic, nor echolocation, just the simply knowing my environment. I was pretty good at it, although I did occasionally fall short on things because I was taking smaller steps rather than finding myself face down on the floor because something was out of place.
I do this every night. The light switch is beside the door. There is no good place to put a lamp beside the bed, and I don't want a nightlight, so I turn off the lights, get undressed, and walk to bed without being able to see anything. I get a good reference of the room before I do it, so I don't have to wonder "Was the computer chair pushed in, or sitting out?"
innate? (Score:2, Interesting)
I noticed I unconsciouly tongue-click when looking for stuff. Shrug.
"Now where did I put it <click> <click> <click>"
Date? (Score:1)
Shook head, looked at calendar....
Nope. Wrong date...
Got to be true!
.
Have to be a daredevil to be successful at this (Score:5, Funny)
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Are you the governor of New York state?
Seems only fair that if California gets the Terminator New York would get superhero - although I would have expected it to be Batman.
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Duh, Batman lives in Gotham City. Spiderman lives in New York.
The longstanding nickname "Gotham" was first attached to New York by Washington Irving in his magazine Salmagundi.
Freaking illiterate ACs.
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radioactive cylinder
Actually, it was a cylinder of biological waste.
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Are you sure the source of DD's abilities stayed the same in every incarnation?
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Yes, and in the Indian version he gets it from a supernatural yogi or something. *shrug* There's no accounting for taste.
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There's no accounting for taste.
Or hearing.
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Radioactive stuff stopped being cool for super heroes when we learned that the only thing radiation did was give cancer. One day we'll stop the biochemical origin story too (I think).
superpowers (Score:2)
You too can have superpowers but there is a sacrifice to be made. You must avoid Windows.
Is that you, Steve Jobs?
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Has he ever considered just trying Facebook?
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
This is exactly what I've been looking for: Something else to do while I'm sitting alone in the dark.
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Great, now you might be able to tell which direction the grue is coming from.
Catburglars? (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, sneaking around the dark house at night screaming at the walls to find your way around. The epitome of stealth!
I am a firefighter (Score:5, Interesting)
...you insensitive clod. ...and one can't hear much in a working structure fire other than one's SCBA, the sounds of the fire, and your buddy on the hoseline.
Which is why we have flashlights and IR cameras mounted on our helmets.
Echolocation can be learned, just not applied in every low-light environment.
I am a cat burglar (Score:5, Funny)
...you insensitive clod. ...and screeching while stealing stuff is generally considered a bad idea in my profession.
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Not to mention very bad form. One thing is taking someones stuff, but waking them in the middle of the night is terrible uncouth.
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Of course, life may be different for you water boys on the end of a hoseline.
It's a good thing my dog wasn't nearby... (Score:3, Interesting)
So if I had anything to add here, it would be: if it's possible at all that You, Too, Can Learn Echolocation, it's certainly not going to be possible within earshot of my stupid dog.
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At least she doesn't start barking when she thinks there may be someone within a quarter mile of your house. I was walking a gravel road yesterday and some damn dog barked itself out of breath, as apparently I was a threat. Stupid owner.
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Done that myself (Score:5, Interesting)
While I am not sure I could pull off flying at night, I know I could easily use it to avoid walking into walls at night... I've done it. It's far from a big deal. The method of sound generation I used was snapping my fingers, though, and not clicking my mouth which I think would confuse my ears even more since my mouth is connected to my ears. But repeatedly snapping my fingers around my head while stepping forward allowed me to appreciate the changes in acoustics well enough to know where walls and other large objects were. On the other hand, it's not quite good enough to avoid stepping on toys left out by my two year old.
The picture we get from such a technique is no picture at all. To create a picture, we would need a dense array of ears of great sensitivity not unlike a retina. At best you can sense that something is there and perhaps how solid it may be. After all, a curtain would mask echoes while walls do a nice job of bouncing the signals.
Still, I am quite certain that blind people already do this without thinking about it. While they may not intentionally send out "pings" in the form of clicks or snaps, they quite likely hear other signals such as the brush of their feet on the carpet, the knock of their feet on the floor or even the rustling of their clothes or the sound of the air flowing from the HVAC system. All of these things generate enough noise signal the allow the notice of the change of acoustic feedback as one to detect changes in the surroundings.
Re:Done that myself (Score:5, Insightful)
But repeatedly snapping my fingers around my head while stepping forward allowed me to appreciate the changes in acoustics well enough to know where walls and other large objects were. On the other hand, it's not quite good enough to avoid stepping on toys left out by my two year old.
Normally one would just turn on the lights, as it's less likely to wake the two year old than incessant clicking or snapping of fingers.
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I don't know about everyone, but my father absolutely HATES turning on the light in the middle of the night, I think because it wakes him up. It certainly was creepy finding him on the toilet in total darkness... but in those cases other senses would alert me to his presense.
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Doing it for large objects is between easy and effortless.
Doing it for small objects is hard.
I keep colliding into small, hard objects I don't know the location of if I try to navigate by sound in the dark.
And after that I usually swear, so others can locate me in the dark.
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Exactly. I can hear my bedpost if I'm pointed the right direction, but it is variable. Hearing the walls is easy. Hearing that barbell you accidentally left on the floor, however. is really hard. Fortunately, your feet have no problem "locating" such things....
The biggest problem with echolocation for humans is not hearing sensitivity or mental ability. It's the fact that our feet don't follow behind our heads except when we're swimming.... We would need a second set of ears on our ankles for echoloca
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A simple and profound observation... it somewhat matches the observations of others such as myself citing my son's toys, however, I like the way you put it better ... our bodies do not follow our heads during normal travel and so it is ineffective.
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We would need a second set of ears on our ankles for echolocation to be practical.
The delivery room doctor told my mother it was a "defect".
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Back in the 70s or 80s, there was a study published by the Scientific American investigating the source of the ability that had developed in some blind to perceive the locations of objects, or at least get an idea of their environment. The subjects themselves had many thoughts about the source of their abilities, some describing it as a pressure they felt on their forehead, but all lost their rudimentary abilities when their ears were covered.
My parents have a copy of the study, but unfortunately, I do not
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On the other hand, it's not quite good enough to avoid stepping on toys left out by my two year old.
Acoustic expert Juan Antonio Martinez at the University of Alcalà de Henares in Spain says it takes 'Two hours per day for a couple of weeks' to learn echolocation. On the other had, we have the toddler, for which it takes at least 18 years to learn to clean up his garbage after him.
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If ever I should become blind, I'd surely investigate in this technique.
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The picture we get from such a technique is no picture at all. To create a picture, we would need a dense array of ears of great sensitivity not unlike a retina.
As I understand it, the picture we get from such a technique is exactly a picture -- it's formulated in the same areas of our brain, and subject to the same mental operations. As others have pointed out, we get a lot more information from our ears than we would get from two single-pixel image sensors. (Think about how you can tell, from a pair of receptors at opposite sides of your head, whether a sound is coming from ahead or behind, above or below.)
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The method of sound generation I used was snapping my fingers, though, and not clicking my mouth which I think would confuse my ears even more since my mouth is connected to my ears.
By using your mouth for clicking, the clicks resonate in frequencies tuned to your internal structures and the returns are also in resonance with your internal structures. This cause a much greater increase in sensitivity and resolution than non-resonant returns would cause, at least that's what I'd imagine from reported research on bats.
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I do this, too. In a familiar environment I've always been very good at pitch-dark navigation. It's immediately difficult after turning off the lights (seems it takes a moment or three for the brain to switch over), but I'll use the sounds of the creaking floor (and so on) for navigation.
When I was a teen I used to walk around in our basement in the dark. I didn't use a clicking or 'shh' sound, I used more of a guttural, deep grunt (a throat growl, if you will). I've got very high frequency sensitivity, so
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>Still, I am quite certain that blind people already do this without thinking about it.
Not quite without thinking about it. However, my uncle (and no doubt many, many more) have been teaching the blind to do this with the taps of their cane for (at least) decades.
hawk
Wouldn't work for firefighters (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be utterly useless for firefighters as they all wear SCBA which requires a full face mask. Further more your ability to hear those clicks are again reduced by gear over your ears, radio chatter and the often very dense smoke around you soaks up large volumes of noise.
This would take serious adaptation to make it even remotely feasible for someone in that scenario. If you're on a hose crew you can just outright forget it all together.
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Just project it on the mask (Score:1)
I think if you wanted to, you could just project something onto the mask using a sort of a portable imaging system.
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If you are going to go that far, it makes much more sense to just put a damned IR camera [google.com] on there.
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I'd go for a technical solution. An emitter for ultrasonic sound, a receiver, a computer to visualize it and a display to show it. Sounds more useful.
Provided you want to haul that thing around in a situation where you're already lugging half a ton of other stuff around, of course.
Blind Wille McTell (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe Robert Johnson really did sell his soul to the Devil.
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Maybe Robert Johnson really did sell his soul to the Devil.
The apocryphal part of that legend isn't that Robert Johnson sold his soul, it's that he sold his soul to the devil. He actually sold it to a nerdy little dweeb with blue hair for $5. After that he had a hard time going through automatic doors.
Ben Underwood (Score:1, Interesting)
Who was blind had a documentary about him (before he passed,MHRIP) called
Extraordinary People - The boy who sees without eyes [youtube.com]
truly amazing, but then is it ? he learned this from an early age and didnt think it was anything special same as most of us take seeing light reflected off objects for granted
Iam more in awe of programmers who are blind (like this guy [gamesfortheblind.com], now that takes a special kind of mind.
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Without sight and hearing you still have a lot of input from your senses. Your skin can detect photons (nice and warm sitting here in the sun) and vibration (hapti
Now we can answer the age old question ... (Score:2)
Of course actually knowing the answer to the question itself may not help address the philosophical issues raised by the question.
Why not.. (Score:1, Redundant)
Instead of relying on sound made from ones own mouth, why not rely on a simple emitter around your neck making the clicks for you? sounds silly but resolution would become a problem pretty quick.
still, very cool.
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why not rely on a simple emitter around your neck
You would need to mount it to your head for best performance, e.g. at the temples, because it needs to be directional, like turning your head and clicking. Because of the reduced frequency emission of the human mouth and the reduced sensitivity of our hearing organs compared to a bat, you'll want to be able to move your head freely.
Dyslexic title (Score:2)
Why can't we have more "Stuff That Matters" articles on chocolate?
I was trying... (Score:2)
read Slashdot on LCD by using Echolocation....never success yet, and found that listen to the RSS clip read aloud by the robotic overload works much better.
And to learn a bit more. . . . (Score:2, Informative)
There's a rather more informative article about it here [sciencedaily.com].
People Reading this Story (Score:1)
imagine when you have 10 people in a room doing that, how can u filter out that static?
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Actually, I'd becurious to know whether lots of people clicking produced interference, or instead produced better coverage of the environment; I suspect the latter, so long as the different people are not producing identical clicks at exactly the same time.
We already do this (Score:1)
Clickers? (Score:2)
That is actually the secondary usefulness of a cane (after visibility). You can make tappy-sounds without attracting undue attention.
Echo-location? How about fins? (Score:2)
Chirping (Score:2)
What about chirping instead of clicking? Clicking is good because it's short, but because it's short it's low powered, whereas if you chirp then you have more power coming out. I wonder how that'd work out for human echolocation too.
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Well they explained the ease of use issues, but chirping only produces a certain frequency at a time while clicks cover a broader and higher frequency range.
I doubt your statement that clicks are low powered because they are short btw.
However, now that I'm thinking about chirps, if you could chirp at high frequencies and had good frequency resolution you could use this while moving and use the Doppler effect, to locate objects.
If you think about using correlation to get better time resolution by processing
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This seems to be an interesting book on the topic:
Title: Blip, ping & buzz: making sense of radar and sonar
Author: Mark Denny
Edition: illustrated
Publisher: JHU Press, 2007
ISBN: 0801886651, 9780801886652
Length: 274 pages
Google books offers a preview.
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I doubt your statement that clicks are low powered because they are short btw.
...
I don't see how anyone can "doubt" this, I mean if you can only make a noise so loud with your mouth it matters whether it lasts a thousandth of a second or half a second.
So yeah as for chirps, chirps only produce a frequency at a time but the freuqnecy it produces at a time is very transient, i.e. a chirp is constantly moving. So if you have an echo, you'll hear distinctively if it's a chirp, when you wouldn't if you just
I'm surprised you aren't doing this already! (Score:1)
I'm always clicking away as I stumble downstairs and don't want to wake up the wife and kids.
Mountain guide (Score:2)
Old news (Score:2)
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That's pretty awesome. And I thought I had a pretty good ability to use ambient sound, he just blows everything else away. I have hearing out in the higher frequency range (and as a result I think, my LF hearing stinks) so I can use a tv set in a room to sound out the room and hallways etc nearby, even behind closed doors. Unfortunately not many can hear up into the range of the flybacks on TVs. I bet if Ben could hear up in there he could carry around a sound generator on his belt or something and woul
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I've seen documentaries on Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, and UFO's. Does that mean I should believe all the crap that's spewed about them? If they are real, there has been so many bogus accounts put out there, you'd never know when the truth was presented.
And yes, that was el Chupacabra that you saw outside your window last night. Beware! It's going to eat your goat, and then eat your SOUL! :)
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I'm saddened by your narrow world-view. You honestly do not think it's possible to fine-tune your brain to automatically discern variances in reflected sounds, in much the same way that it has been doing it for thousands of years?
I thought this 'story' was sensationalist as it was kind of obvious to me. Thus I was very surprised to find your post.
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I'm saddened by your narrow world-view. You honestly do not think it's possible to fine-tune your brain to automatically discern variances in reflected sounds, in much the same way that it has been doing it for thousands of years?
I thought this 'story' was sensationalist as it was kind of obvious to me. Thus I was very surprised to find your post.
Kinda makes you wonder what his skull sounds like under echo-location.
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> in much the same way that it has been doing it for _thousands_ of years?
Easy for you to say Mr Vampire Man.
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This seems extremely unlikely, and most probably pseudoscience.
It's no pseudo-science. Unfortunately they leave out some facts, like the fact that it only works for people who are born with antennae.
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Wasn't this the same kid that claimed he could play video games through sound alone?
If not, I at least remember one kid playing SNES on the news who was 'completely blind' and clicking at a TV screen. I wanted to kick the news reporter for being a fool and getting trolled.