The head of the Bat Lab for Neuro-Ecology at Tel Aviv University is leading a study on improving the ways that robots can talk with one another using sound. The focus of Yossi Yovel is the Mexican fish-eating bat in the Gulf of California that interacts with its kind.

The bat feeds on small fishes that show up at night. However, due to the cover of darkness, the bats have to look for food in huge areas of water, CNBC reported. To solve this problem, the bats work out in small groups.

According to Arkive, the robust legs allow the fish-eating bats to carry heavy loads. Their long, thin claws and feed reduce the drag through the water while hunting. Because of their long, narrow wings, the bats can fly in uncluttered environments. It has a dark buff fur to pale tan on the back and white on the underparts.

Picking sounds from other bats

While searching for fish, the bats spread out and pick up on the sounds that the other bats emit and receive. Each bat looks out for food as an individual, but the animals eavesdrop on each other which enables one bat to know what the other bats are doing without the need to communicate actively.

At night, when the fish-eating myotis fly over the ocean, the bats search for ripples in the water to indicate a fish swimming near the surface. It uses its long feet, large toes, and sharp, curved claws to transfer the fish to its mouth. The fish is consumed while the bat is in flight or when it has settled at a nearby roost. The species could eat up to 30 fish each night. But it also feeds on small crustaceans and flying insects and could drink seawater.

The researchers placed tiny sensors on the bats to collect data. Afterward, they would use the findings to draw up an algorithm which can train robots to work together as a team and talk to one another using only sound.

To see in the dark or search for food, bats use echolocation. While flying, the animal makes calls and listens to the returning echoes to build a sonic map of its surroundings. With the sonic map, the bats can tell how far is something by the length of time it takes for the sounds to return, the website of the Bat Conservation Trust said.

The gestation period of the fish-eating myotis is around 55 days. The female generally gives birth to a single pup in late May or early June during which the female could be seen carrying the baby bat on its teats. The pup usually remains with the mother for up to three weeks. But it will not leave the roost until it could fly when it reaches seven weeks old.

According to Smithsonian, around 70 percent of the world's 1,240 known species of bats eat mosquitoes, roaches, flies, and other insects. The others prefer nectar, fruit, or blood, while some are carnivorous. In India, some carnivorous bats eat birds and reptiles, while in South America, the animal dines on amphibians and mammals.

Certain bat species broke away from the bug-eating norm, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The researchers, led by Sharlene Santana, an integrative biologist at the University of Washington and curator of mammals at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, found commonalities in body size trends and skull anatomy. These findings indicate that evolution arrived at similar solutions on multiple occasions.

Using geometric morphometrics, the researchers used spatial landmarks to analyze the shape of an object independent of its size. The purpose was to study 140 skulls from 35 species of insectivorous and carnivorous bats that the researchers obtained through museum collections. They compared the specimens statistically in the size and shape of the skull and used the data from scientific literature to study body sizes across species.

Robot capability

Yovel said the robots could potentially do anything such as map an environment, search for things, clean, and whatever could be imagined. The team is currently building a group of small robots with each robot having a speaker and two microphones to emit and pick up a sound.

He said the robots can initially work underwater, using sonar technology, to move around and search for objects individually. The robots can also listen in on what the others in the robot pack are finding, mimicking the manner of the bats when they hunt for food.

Because the study is in its early stage, Yovel estimated that his team has the potential to train a group of robots in five years that would only use sound to communicate. They are not yet building anything that is applicative because, at this point, they only want to prove a point. The researchers want to prove that they can really do the task efficiently and think of actual robots when they could show an algorithm that works.

[researchpaper 리서치페이퍼= Vittorio Hernandez 기자]