The Microchipoptera Project

Goal:  To construct a flying bat-sized creature that uses ultrasonic echolocation to both navigate and scrutinize its environment sufficiently to distinguish between obstacles and "insects".   The bat's sensory and motor system will be constructed from neural models and implemented using "neuromorphic" VLSI techniques.

This project combines the efforts of many different members of the group, each working on various stand-alone aspects of the overall project with the goal of integrating the individual projects into a working whole.  Target date is 2004.

Faculty Involvement:   T. Horiuchi,  C. Moss,  S. Shamma
Student Involvement:   Mete Erturk, Zhiping Shi, Kaushik Ghose

Last Update:  Jul 28, 2000 - Telluride Results:AER Neuron Transceiver Chip used to generate EI-type responses (see 'LSO & Midbrain' modeling).

This page still under construction (!) :

The Plan:
 

Speakers & Microphones
Ultrasonic Cochlea
Hair cell modeling
Cochlear Nucleus
LSO and Midbrain
Inferior Colliculus
MGB and AC
Attention & Tracking
Superior Colliculus
Vocalization Control
Motor Behavior


  We are working with two different hardware systems:  a physically-larger single-frequency sonar system ("narrowband") and a tiny broadband system.  The narrowband system is being used to rapidly test concepts following initial software tests.  Photos of these two systems are found below:

In the photo to the left, is our narrowband sonar system that operates only on a frequency of 40 kHz.  The fixed arrangement of the microphones was chosen to produce a difference in echo amplitude with azimuthal direction.  The current system roughly extracts direction and range and is capable of servoing the head (which is mounted on an model airplane servo) to track moving targets in real-time.
 

green bat - broadband echolocation systemOn the right, we have a photo of our broadband system using a baked polymer clay bat head with a  tiny Knowles (FG3329) microphone soldered to the end of a group of wires.  This system has two broadband ultrasonic (and audio) microphones that will feed our silicon cochleae chips.  These will be replaced with MEMS-based ultrasonic microphones in the coming year.

Links to useful bat webpages:

- Stephen Dear
- Nobuo Suga
- Thomas Park
- George Pollack
- Ellen Covey
- Pete Casseday
- Cindy Moss - University of Maryland
- Jim Simmons

- Roman Kuc

- bat detector links (a webpage in Bochum, DE)
- Ultrasound Advice (UK) (bat detectors, ultrasonic equipment)
- Mammals of Texas Online (eptesicus)
- Mammology Course Homepage (University of Illinois) - bat skulls
- Bat Conservation International