sonar |

The glove is outfitted with a sonar, an Arduino Mini tactile sensor and a couple of water jets.

Underwater obstacles or hazards are considered to be quite dangerous. If, by chance, you are living in a country which has seen it’s shares of floods, then a device which is capable of seeing underwater is a must-have. Japanese duo developed a portable sonar, which is capable of detecting objects up to two feet away, even in murky waters.

The two Ph.D. candidates who have assembled this device are from the Tsukuba University. It just so happens that the University is situated at a short distance from the Kinugama River. Last year, the river caused a massive flood which literally buried the city of Joso under tons of metric cubes of murky waters.

Aisen Carolina Chacin along with his colleague Takeshi Ozu had a couple of things in mind before they went on to create this object. First of all, the rising risk of floods. The duo thought that a device is needed in order for its used to be capable of navigating underwater. Second, this device will surely benefit the search-and-rescue parties, which work around the clock in order to save people from drowning.

Thus, the IrukaTack was created, a glove-like device which incorporates a sonar and a highly-sophisticated sensor grid. The name of this device contains the Japanese words for glove and dolphin because the gadget does resemble the nose of the dolphin.

Apparently, the device is nothing but a collection of plastic tubes, but beneath its surface, there is more going on. The IrukaTact is equipped with high-power water jets and Arduino Pro Mini tactile interface, which can be used in order to see what goes on underwater. Also, the device comes equipped with the MB7066 sonar sensor.

So, how does this device work? According to its makers, the sonar sends a pulse in the immediate area. If the sonar detects a solid object far away from the user’s hand, the jets incorporated in the glove will send a small pulse to the fingers. Moreover, if a solid object is in the vicinity of the user, the jet will send a stronger pulse.

Let’s say we understand how the device works. But the next question is: what can we use it for? For example, we can use the sonar glove in order to search our surrounding for certain objects. The glove would sure come in handy if we lost something in the low-visibility water.

Also, rescue team could use such a device in order to search for people underwater.

According to the duo, they are planning on making available the plans for the device. This means that anyone could be capable of building its own sonar glove.

Photo credits:www.wikimedia.org

You would expect football players to run interference, but it seems that the animal kingdom is also full of unique examples. The Mexican free-tailed bat (Tadarida brasiliensis) is one of those examples. It blocks the competitor’s hunting abilities, a new study says, by using acoustic jam calls.

Scientists noted that the bats use this call to send rival’s echolocation out of commission. Bats use echolocation (a process through which sound waves are made to bounce off nearby objects, much like sonar) for orientation and hunting purposes.

So it is impossible for a bat to zero in on prey when this important tool isn’t properly functioning.

The new study was published in Science magazine on November 6^th and suggests that the Mexican free-tailed bat begins making such interference calls when other bats from the same species are out hunting.

This behavior was discovered by accident when Aaron Corcoran, biology postdoctoral student at the University of Maryland, was studying sonar disturbances caused by Grote’s Tiger Moths. He was at Arizona’s –New Mexico border attempting to understand how this moth jams the sonar of big brown bats when he saw that free-tailed bats make their own calls.

Corcoran decided to review this data in the lab and made the connection. Mexican free-tailed bats, he saw, made unique calls similar to ultra-fast clicking sounds that tiger moths usually use to block the big brown bat’s sonar.

“I had jamming signals on the brain, and so I needed to convince myself that this was true and I wasn’t just imagining the similarity.”

Corcoran though when he first came up with the hypothesis that these bats were attempting to block each other’s hunting calls.

He therefore attempted to exclude any other explanations. Corcoran and his colleagues began recording bat interactions by using a high-speed camera and microphones set up to pinpoint the bat’s location. The team came to the conclusion that it was only when a bat was emitting what they called a “feeding buzz” that jamming began.

Later on, Corcoran played recordings of this peculiar signal in an attempt to see whether the behavior of other Mexican free-tailed bats in the wild would be influenced. If the sounds were played just as the bat was catching an insect, the likelihood of catching its prey decreased by 85.9 percent.

Altering the pitch of the signal did not produce the same effect.

“I had no idea that such a behavior existed until now. It’s absolutely fantastic work.”

John Ratcliffe, biologist at the University of Toronto said.

Japanese Duo Developed a Portable Sonar

Bats Run Interference by Jamming Rival’s Sonar