"Seeing" in the dark: neuromorphic VLSI modeling of bat echolocation

Abstract

While modern sonar and radar processing systems are constructed using large sensor arrays that have incredible imaging and localization capabilities, the question of what bats experience and how they process echo data with only two ears and a pea-sized brain remains a major mystery. The exploration of this question and the attempt to construct a functional model of the bat's neural signal processing using neuromorphic very large scale integration (VLSI) techniques and robotics have provided an interesting framework for our laboratory's research program.