Teach Yourself to Echolocate: A beginner’s guide to navigating with sound

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-echolocate

by zebraman • 8 years ago

571 105 8 years ago

pjmorris• 8 years ago

My technique is caveman compared to the article, but I habitually roll down the windows before I back out of a parking spot, so I can listen for as well as look for anything that might be in the way. I think I started this after our son was born, born of an increasing mindfulness of kids and their associates (balls, toys, pets.)

omginternets• 8 years ago

In the military, I at some point learned that listening was at least as important as looking. A lot of the senior guys on their 3rd or 4th tour would patrol without a helmet -- it messed with their hearing.

Wingman4l7• 8 years ago

Opening the window a crack is instinctual for me now whenever I first hear a siren on the road, so I can better figure out where it's coming from -- it can give me several extra seconds to plan if and how I need to get out of the way of emergency services. I highly recommend it!

godot• 8 years ago

Very good point! I happen to roll down windows every time I start up my car for another reason (the air trapped inside the car while it's parked, probably under sunshine, doesn't feel great to breathe in), but you're totally right that the sound gives a lot more clues than just seeing, when backing out of a spot.

riledhel• 8 years ago

Also helpful in really foggy roads, slow down and roll down windows a little to pick up other vehicles

kfarr• 8 years ago

It sounds crazy but I crack the driver side window anytime I'm not going highway speeds. So much more info about what's going on than being hermetically sealed in a steel tube.

givinguflac• 8 years ago

I’ve been practicing this for years and it’s quite useful. It’s not like seeing of course, but I’m able to get an idea of a room size and material hard/softness. Useful for not walking into walls in the dark or finding something when I don’t want to wake my SO.

In general I’ve always been into sound and I think a lot of people have better hearing than they think, but never learned to hear well. I find it odd that we have such prominent childhood learning focused around sight (shapes, colors, etc) but barely teach children anything about hearing beyond animal sounds. I’m not advocating golden ears courses for kindergartens, but listening skills can be quite useful in lots of situations, not the least of which is situational awareness.

jfries• 8 years ago

What do you consider good hearing skills to practice, except echolocating?

Rumudiez• 8 years ago

As one example, I’ve seen kids develop perfect pitch growing up in highly musical environments. I think it’s easier for them to learn it than adults, but it becomes a lifelong skill.

boon• 8 years ago

One of my hobbies is birding: specifically going out and trying to count all the birds I can find down to a species level. This requires a good ear to do well. Many times I find myself closing my eyes and pausing all bodily motion to really listen intently for the low chips of a sparrow, or distant drumming of a woodpecker.

praptak• 8 years ago

Recognizing intervals. There's a lot of free apps for this.

p1esk• 8 years ago

Listen to Morse code.

bjelkeman-again• 8 years ago

Situational awareness goes way down when people walk around with headphones with loud music. I notice it on a lot of people and how they behave in traffic. Just listening to things around you can be quite interesting as you move around. I never wear headphones for this reason.

On interesting thing is to open the windows (and sunroof) in an electric car, whilst driving in built up areas < 20 mph/35 km/h, you hear a lot more what is going on (including insects and birds) and it is a very different experience.

njarboe2• 8 years ago

On a motorcycle one is much more connected to the environment and I think that is one reason people like them. Its fun to come down into a hollow and feel the temperature change. Smells are also easily detected. Sound, on the other hand, is mostly the motorcycle noise (which can be fun too). Reading this comment made me think it would be really interesting to try out an electric motorcycle.

lucb1e3• 8 years ago

I wear headphones when I'm out most of the time, but at least half the time I don't have anything playing (and a third of the time it would be an audio book, not a constant noise like most music). It's still a big difference in how connected I feel to my surroundings. I'm not sure it's related to sound, as my headphones don't dampen much. I think it's just the expectation of people when they see someone with headphones and it allows me not to interact as much.

toast0• 8 years ago

I don't often listen to loud music in headphones, but if I have headphones on where I need situation awareness, I'll be quick to remove one --- usually the one I expect to be closest to whatever I might need to hear (most often car traffic).

Windows down in a quiet (electric) car is pretty amazing too, even in a traffic jam.

agumonkey• 8 years ago

It's fun to train your sense/brain. Since I started learning music, I try to detect harmonics in mechanics (train, car).

Also I wonder how much of this will come to you naturally if you live in the wild. You rely on so many minute signals ..

deckarep2• 8 years ago

For anyone wanting to see a master example of echolocation see this short video: https://youtu.be/TeFRkAYb1uk

atentaten• 8 years ago

Coincidentally, I watched this last week and found it highly informative, entertaining.

cududa• 8 years ago

This is incredible. Know if any research that’s booked farther in here?

the21st• 8 years ago

I recommend this excellent podcast on the same topic https://www.thisamericanlife.org/544/batman

anonytrary2• 8 years ago

I remembering learning about this boy in high school. In the posted article, he suggests that non-blind humans can simulate the handicap by wearing a blindfold.

For someone who isn't blind, learning how to do this is very difficult. This is the kind of skill that rewires your brain and comes out of necessity rather than desire. By actually being blind, you get 10,000 hours of practice in around two years. Even if you practiced this an hour a day blindfolded, it would take decades to get 10,000 hours of practice.

glenneroo• 8 years ago

Have you ever tried? I find the article's description a bit too advanced for a first try. I have personally had success finding walls or large furniture after only a couple minutes of very slowly walking around a room and clicking my tongue (higher pitched) with my eyes closed. True, I probably won't ever be able to ride a bike, but it's sufficient to quickly test out basic echolocation. I have done many trials with friends and everyone is able to hear at least a subtle difference when standing directly in front of a wall as opposed to a few feet away.

vesche• 8 years ago

I instantly thought of this video as well. Definitely an extraordinary human. Sadly, he passed away a few years ago. Warning, here be feels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnouXX1meso

deckarep2• 8 years ago

I didn’t know he passed. What a remarkable person. Thanks for the update.

acjohnson553• 8 years ago

This reminds me of an incredible episode of the podcast Invisibilia: https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-be...

tw1010• 8 years ago

This article reminds me of how it felt to be on the internet as a child. It seemed like this magical place where around every corner there was hidden an alchemic recipe to achieve something magical, if only you knew how to search in the right places.

closed2• 8 years ago

So true! This reminded me of the first time I came upon Conway's Doomsday Algorithm for telling what day of the week a certain date is.

http://rudy.ca/doomsday.html

FigmentEngine• 8 years ago

or Zeller's congruence https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeller%27s_congruence

tzs2• 8 years ago

The method given on that site for computing the component that comes from the last 2 digits of the year can be made a lot easier for mental calculation. I'll give some known improvements below, and then offer one of my own that is noticeably simpler.

In the following, let Y = the last two digits of the year (e.g., 18 for 2018), and let N be the value we are trying to be compute. We only actually need N mod 7, but I'm going to leave out the reduction mod 7 in the equations to reduce clutter.

The simplest way to compute N is simply:

  N = Y + Y//4

I'll use Python3-like arithmetic and pseudocode in this comment, so "//" is integer division (with x for times to avoid accidental italics).

To keep the numbers smaller during mental calculation, people have developed alternatives. The one given in that link is this:

  N = Y // 12
  N += Y % 12
  N += (Y % 12) // 4

An interesting alternative, called the "odd+11" method, is given on the Wikipedia article [1]:

  if odd(Y): Y += 11
  Y = Y // 2
  if odd(Y): Y += 11
  N = -Y

For the last step there, N = -Y, it will usually be easier and clearer to reduce Y mod 7 before doing that N = -Y. Also, given Y, sometimes the simplest way to get -Y mod 7 is to just note what you have to add to Y to get to a multiple of 7. For example, if when you get to that step Y = 20, note that adding 1 to Y gives a multiple of 7, so -20 mod 7 = 1.

Anyway, here's my method. It keeps the numbers smaller--if you reduce mod 7 aggressively never more than 12--at the cost of slightly more branches in the logic.

Let the last two digits of the year be T and U, so Y = 10 T + U.

  N = 2 x T
  if odd(T): N += 3
  N += U
  if odd(T):
    N += (U+2)//4
  else:
    N += U//4

That if...else is taking into account the number of leap years that have occurred in the current decade (not including the year T0). When doing mental calculation, it is probably easier just to remember that if T is odd, at 1 if U >= 2 and add another 1 if U >= 6, and if T is even same except at 4 and 8.

Here are examples, using some years from the link, with parenthetical explanations for some of the numbers:

2018: T=1, U=8. 2x1(T) + 3(T is odd) + 8(U) + 2(U>=2,6) = 1 mod 7.

1929: T=2, U=9. 2x2(T) + 9(U) + 2(U>=4,8) = 1 mod 7.

1999: T=9, U=9. 2x2(T%7) + 3(T is odd) + 2(U%7) + 2(U>=2,6) = 4 mod 7. Note that I reduced U and T mod 7 inline when using them. You can do this as long as when checking odd/even you use the original T, and when adding in the leap year correction you use the original U. E.g., for 99, you could compute it like it was 22, except you have to add the 3 for odd T, and use 9 for the U>=2,6 check.

1982: T=8, U=2. 2x1(T%7) + 2(U) = 4 mod 7.

1969: T=6, U=9. 2x(-1)(T%7) + 2(U%7) + 2(U>=4,8) = 2 mod 7.

Some might find changing the leap year handling to this a little easier instead of just remembering the 2,6 or 4,8 +1 points. Change the if...else to this:

  N += U//4
  if odd(T) and N%4 >= 2: N += 1

E.g., compute the leap year adjustment with U//4 regardless of whether T is odd or even, and if U is in {2, 3, 6, 7} and T is odd, add one more.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule#The_%22odd_+_11%...

Waterluvian• 8 years ago

Well said. For me the 90s and early 2000s internet was completely magical. My fondest memories of my teens was finally having a computer in my room and the freedom to stay up late and explore the online universe. I met a lot of people and saw the advent of a lot of new things.

I wonder if that's going to happen for my kids. Today's internet feels so highly commercialized. All the new exciting discoveries are in the form of profit-driven silicon valley products with no humanity or soul.

I may very well be wrong. This is all emotion based and I really don't have concrete evidence. I'm probably falling into a fit of nostalgia.

NeedMoreTea• 8 years ago

The sad thing for me is that a lot of those strange, eclectic sites are still there, only they became really hard to find. Thanks to Google and other search engines prioritising recency and Brands (with a capital) in all results, the eclectic is penalised to the point of near invisibility.

There was never a point to them, but they were hugely interesting. Today there's no point bothering as it would be gone forever a month after posted to twitter or a Facebook group now bloody everything has to have a stream or timeline. So akin to a chilling effect it invisibly promotes things that have releases. Products.

Nostalgia is some of it I'm sure, but I really do think there's something more concrete there too.

samstave• 8 years ago

* My fondest memories of my teens was finally having a computer in my room and the freedom to stay up late and explore the online universe*

This is something i think about regarding my kids... specifically that my experience was free and unfettered - theirs is contolled, walled and full of ads and bullshit.

Alex39172• 8 years ago

I wonder if that's going to happen for my kids.

I've got a four month old. By the time she's in third or fourth grade, I expect that VR will give her the same kinds of experiences that I had with the web at that age. What made the web exciting wasn't just the fact that it was run by amateurs, it was the fact that there was just an enormous amount of possibility waiting to be explored where we genuinely didn't know the answers.

I actually think the web itself may go back into that kind of phase again after a couple more iterations of Moore's Law make programming easy enough for people who wouldn't be able to do it today, especially when combined with blockchain opening up new kinds of relationships that people can have with one another. The web currently has some issues, but I think a lot of people have given up on it prematurely without taking into consideration the new kinds of experiences the recent and upcoming improvements to the underlying infrastructure are going to make possible.

MrEldritch2• 8 years ago

I think you're totally right that it feels like that wonderful old Web, the one that felt like a magical place, a weird place, seems to have vanished.

For me, some of that's moved on to YouTube. Even today, I find channels full of crazy stuff, brilliant stuff, beautiful stuff, educational stuff, stuff I'd never even heard before, just randomly stumbling around. It's hard to find them, what with the suggestions throwing only the lowest-common-denominator version of the stuff I get baited into clicking on, but sometimes I manage to run across it.

andrepd2• 8 years ago

No, I think that very sadly you're 100% right. They won. The internet is commercial. The internet is the corporation's, not the people's. The early, magical, futuristic Internet is gone for good. All we have now is a bastardized version of that ideal of global network.

turdnagel• 8 years ago

I do like the commenting on this site but is there a way to collapse comments without downvoting? The fact that I have to scroll halfway down the page to find comments actually relevant to the article is a major flaw with HN's threading system.

grzm• 8 years ago

The [-] in the comment header is clickable and will collapse the comment and any replies in its thread.

rubyfan• 8 years ago

That’s why I like HN. I visit only a few news sites per day and HN usually brings a treat that I never would have stumbled on myself.

arthurofbabylon• 8 years ago

Most of us echolocate already, oftentimes without even knowing it.

An exercise to test/prove existing echolocation abilities: Stand 10 meters from a wall. Close your eyes and walk towards it. Try to stop right in front of the wall without opening the eyes. The majority of participants will stop when the wall is 1/5 meter in front of the face. Participants report “hearing” the wall.

Broadly speaking, listening is the human means for becoming aware of physical threats. Even unconsciously heard sounds will trigger stress hormones.

sehugg• 8 years ago

I usually sleep with a white noise app running, and I can always hear when the cat is crawling around nearby. (Free app idea, Sonic Cat Detector -- you're welcome :) )

happy-go-lucky• 8 years ago

Here's an inspiring talk by Daniel Kish who has been blind since he was 13 months old and relies on echolocation.

Daniel Kish: How I use sonar to navigate the world

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH0aihGWB8U

d6e• 8 years ago

Do loud noises or loud music interfere with it?

lucb1e3• 8 years ago

I would imagine it does, but I'm also curious how quiet it had to be for this to work.

ChrisFoster• 8 years ago

It definitely does. I've practiced this a little myself and in louder environments you need a louder click. On the other hand, ambient noise can give rich information about close obstacles without yourself or that object needing to actively make any noise.

znpy• 8 years ago

This reminds me of a ted talk I had the pleasure to enjoy watching with a good friend while "intoxicated".

The talk's title is "Can we create new senses for humans?" by David Eagleman and is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c1lqFXHvqI

erikig2• 8 years ago

Not sure how "intoxicated" is different from intoxicated but this was a great TED talk, thnx.

acct17712• 8 years ago

He should have used "inebriated", technically cannabis does act as a toxin to you, but, I find it misleading to categorize it like that =]

mycall2• 8 years ago

There should be an app for this.

lucb1e3• 8 years ago

Most phones have stereo microphones and they're individually accessible by apps. Combined with the accelerometer for rough position change tracking, it must be possible to build. Would be super cool to see in the dark like that.

Edit: wait, we don't just have two mics in our head, we also have our outer ear that's required for this. I guess the phone would need physical addons for this to work.

pessimizer• 8 years ago

The fact that blind people make decisions based on active echolocation without realizing that's what they're doing is IMO one of the great arguments against the idea that we're particularly knowledgeable about our own conscious thought processes.

How Well Do We Know Our Own Conscious Experience? The Case of Human Echolocation by Eric Schwitzgebel and Michael S. Gordon

http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/Echo.htm

been obsessed with this paper since it came out.

azeirah• 8 years ago

The book "Phi" might interest you, it's written by an influential consciousness researcher, Giulio Tononi.

There is one example in the book, I believe, where a person is consciously blind, and is completely convinced they're blind, but when asked to walk through a hallway filled with junk and obstacles, the person passes through the hallway without a problem. When asked, "how did you avoid those obstacles?", they answered "luck", "small obstacles", etc...

It almost seems to me as if consciousness serves a social function. The mind's eye is blind, but the unconscious eye isn't. Yet, they communicate as if they were blind.

I wonder if there are more cases like this one, whether they lose their ability to communicate in all/most similar cases.

jholman• 8 years ago

The blindness/sightedness phenomenon you're describing is called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight .

There's a controversial opposite, called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%E2%80%93Babinski_syndrom...

(Semi-relatedly, plug for Peter Watt's book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel) )

Your sentence about "It almost seems to me as if..." seems to be hinting at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphenomenalism / https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism/ . This is a theory/proposal that consciousness does not actually cause behaviour, but is simply a subject experience caused by the physical processes that do cause behaviour (how's THAT for a gross oversimplification, fite me bro). I suggest that this is both an interesting theory in its own right, but also an interesting mental exercise to limber up how one thinks about things like volition/free-will and responsibility.

diminoten• 8 years ago

the idea that we're particularly knowledgeable about our own conscious thought processes.

Is there anyone out there actually pushing this idea?

Nasrudith• 8 years ago

I managed to discover that on my own when bored and walking around both in the dark and while waiting for a ride to arrive. Although it was a different technique.

I noticed that I could make a continuous sound and it would correspond roughly with the distance and gave me a one-dimensional relative distance detection from my head. A 'hissing' sound worked best for continuous reading while being subtle. It was pretty easy for me but it might have to do with being on the autistic spectrum and hypersensitivity.

G4BB3R• 8 years ago

This gave me an idea, I will try to learn this for night vision :D

mitchtbaum• 8 years ago

anyone else read the title as e-chocolate?

The capital E makes it look like a proper noun, like Email.

Crazy thing how these letters in our alphabet work.

We need a better alphabet! Ya?

PhasmaFelis5• 8 years ago

I didn't, but I can't stop doing it now.

m-i-l• 8 years ago

Yes. Better still, I skim read "Teach Yourself to Echolocate" as "Treat Yourself to E-chocolate". Maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me something. Did a bit of an internet search and, unlike e-cigarettes, it seems like e-chocolate doesn't exist, yet.

drakonka• 8 years ago

This is so cool, reminds me of a documentary I saw about people who do this (it may have even featured the same guy, I can't remember). After seeing the documentary I spent the next weekend trying to get around my apartment blindfolded, clicking. This article inspires me to try again.

nik61• 8 years ago

In the Dark Universe novel by Daniel F Galouye, a section of humanity has hidden themselves for generations in lightless caverns below a poisoned Earth. They have become functionally blind, and find their way about by knocking stones together for echo location.

Teach Yourself to Echolocate: A beginner’s guide to navigating with sound

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