Calculation of Head Related Transfer Functions of bats using the Boundary Element Method

Overskrift:

ChiRoPing (Chiroptera, Robots, and Sonar) is an EU-funded research project aimed at understanding how bats use their echolocation perception ability and apply this knowledge to the design of new robotic senses. Four species of bats are selected for the study and models of their heads including minute details of ears, mouth and nose are obtained through CT scans. The project involves, among other things, the use of numerical methods on such scanned models to study the role of their features in the bat sensorial performance. As the bats operate at very high frequencies and as their ears and noses are very complicated and involve thin surfaces, the numerical modelling is challenging. The paper reports preliminary results of the numerical study and investigates the possibilities of reducing the computational complexity of the models.