Human echolocation waveform analysis

All humans have the ability to exploit acoustic echoes for cognitive sensing of the environment. There are blind people who use active versions of the technique as an augmentation to the long stick and can even perform remarkable tasks such as riding a bicycle. Those who are expert in this practise can evaluate range, location, size, shape and texture of objects. This provides a very powerful basis for perception and cognition and is somewhat beyond that which is routinely achieved by radar systems. This example of “sight by sound” makes an ideal candidate to study in order to understand and articulate the cognitive methods used. Subsequently artificial forms of cognition can be synthesised and applied to radar and sonar sensing. In this paper we report on an initial examination of human echolocation by presenting and analysing transmitted and received waveforms generated via “tongue-clicking”.