Sound location technology has often been patterned around the human ear, but why do that when bats are clearly better at it? Virginia Tech researchers have certainly asked that question. They've developed a sound location system that mates a bat-like ear design with a deep neural network to pinpoint sounds within half a degree -- a pair of human ears is only accurate within nine degrees, and even the latest technology stops at 7.5 degrees. The system flutters the outer ear to create Doppler shift signatures related to the sound's source. As the patterns are too complex to easily decipher, the team trained the neural network to provide the source direction for every received echo.

Rats are nimble navigators, able to find their way around, under, and over obstacles, and through the tightest spaces. Roboticists have long dreamed of giving their creations similar navigation skills. To be useful in the real world, robots must be able to find their way around on their own. Some are already learning to do that in homes, offices, warehouses, hospitals, and hotels--and in the case of self-driving cars, entire cities. Despite that progress, robots still struggle to perform the tasks for which they're designed even under mildly challenging conditions.