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This is interesting, I must give it a try because I practice echolocation in real life. I have perfectly good eyesight but seeing some documentaries about blind

by exDM69 12y ago

This is interesting, I must give it a try because I practice echolocation in real life. I have perfectly good eyesight but seeing some documentaries about blind people who echolocate prompted me to learn some myself. I'm not very good but I can improve my situational awereness in darkness.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Please tell more about how you learned and practice echolocation.
- StavrosK 12y ago
  I am also interested in this.
- exDM69 12y ago
  I saw a few videos about blind kids who echolocate [0], and got inspired by it. The videos only briefly showed how they practice, but it did show a teacher training a pupil by putting a pane of glass on either side of the head and then made him guess which side it is on. Echolocation is not some kind of magic ability, where a person without vision gains superhuman abilities to measure time between echoes. This is the way it is often portrayed in the media, though. Shaping your mouth and your lips, click with your tongue to create a directional click going to your left or right hand side. Then listen to the sound of the click (the click itself, not some magical echo 10 ms later) and try to hear differences in the color or timbre of the click. It's just like tweaking the settings of a reverb effect in an audio software. Hard surfaces like glass or concrete sound very different from soft things like humans or trees. Distant objects sound different than close ones. Scientifically, you are measuring the impulse response in frequency domain [1] (ie. spectrogram). According to the convolution theorem [2], the impulse response has all the "information" about the surroundings you can have (applies to acoustic, mechanical and electrical signals too). I sometimes practice by trying to navigate long hallways at the office and trying find my desk without the help of eyesight (I know it is n'th door to the left, and open doors are easy to tell from hard walls). Sometimes I practice outdoors just trying to recognize trees, buildings, cars or humans from their echo. Blind people often echolocate subconsciously by listening the echoes of their footsteps and surrounding noises. This was demonstrated by a echolocation teacher by playing white noise in a familiar room and seeing their new students who claim they don't echolocate get lost in their own living rooms. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9mvRRwu5Gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9mvRRwu5Gw [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_response http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_response [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution_theorem

by exDM69 12y ago

TeMPOraL 12y ago

Please tell more about how you learned and practice echolocation.

StavrosK 12y ago
I am also interested in this.
exDM69 12y ago
I saw a few videos about blind kids who echolocate [0], and got inspired by it. The videos only briefly showed how they practice, but it did show a teacher training a pupil by putting a pane of glass on either side of the head and then made him guess which side it is on. Echolocation is not some kind of magic ability, where a person without vision gains superhuman abilities to measure time between echoes. This is the way it is often portrayed in the media, though. Shaping your mouth and your lips, click with your tongue to create a directional click going to your left or right hand side. Then listen to the sound of the click (the click itself, not some magical echo 10 ms later) and try to hear differences in the color or timbre of the click. It's just like tweaking the settings of a reverb effect in an audio software. Hard surfaces like glass or concrete sound very different from soft things like humans or trees. Distant objects sound different than close ones. Scientifically, you are measuring the impulse response in frequency domain [1] (ie. spectrogram). According to the convolution theorem [2], the impulse response has all the "information" about the surroundings you can have (applies to acoustic, mechanical and electrical signals too). I sometimes practice by trying to navigate long hallways at the office and trying find my desk without the help of eyesight (I know it is n'th door to the left, and open doors are easy to tell from hard walls). Sometimes I practice outdoors just trying to recognize trees, buildings, cars or humans from their echo. Blind people often echolocate subconsciously by listening the echoes of their footsteps and surrounding noises. This was demonstrated by a echolocation teacher by playing white noise in a familiar room and seeing their new students who claim they don't echolocate get lost in their own living rooms. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9mvRRwu5Gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9mvRRwu5Gw [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_response http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_response [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution_theorem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution_theorem