A tiny directional sound sensor inspired by crickets designed for micro-air vehicles

Insects can accurately navigate and track sound sources in complex environments using efficient methods based on highly appropriate sensory-motor processing systems. It is proposed here to describe, model and test these methods, by designing them for a micro-flying device. For this purpose, a new bio-mimetic acoustic sensor inspired by the cricket´s auditory system was developed and tested. The sound sensor consists of two tiny omnidirectional microphones weighing only 0.1g, equipped with acoustic resonators and a biomimetic temporal processing system. The hearing system was tuned to the carrier frequency of the sound source, which is 4.7kHz (the frequency of crickets´ song). The performances of the directional sound sensor were tested and described in terms of their linearity and accuracy, and their robustness to sound disturbances and dynamic sound source movements.