[Dprglist] Sample Retrieval vacuum cleaner

[John Swindle]

Ron and Doug,
I am interested if I can exploit the localizer, repurposed not as beacons. Sound can be used for two unrelated tasks: echolocation and localization. Ironically, echoes are a huge source of errors when doing localization, but echoes are vital for echolocation. The two can be used together if the localizer's echoes are processed as passive sonar. This requires a very clean signal because the echoes are subtle. I've spent most of my time seeking waveforms that are inherently low-noise and low jitter.
Thanks for noting that sound is used for medical imaging. The speed of sound in liquids is much faster than in air, so for reasonable resolution, the sound must be much higher frequency, and liquids are coupled better, so they conduct those high frequencies. No need to go to high frequencies to do imaging in air, and air just won't couple the high frequencies anyway. Your note reminds me that sonar in air could be processed with tomography software. I looked at that a few years ago and was bewildered by tomography. Worth another look.
My first thought of the bat bot was a baseball bat pulverizing the return samples, then I realized you meant the animal.
As usual, I am not very interested in making my own motive platform. If I could get sonar imaging working, maybe someone would host the gadget on their robot. The gadget would be omnidirectional, so it would not be pointed at things. But it would be large, about the size of the cat toys that are big donut rings with a ball captive in the ring, so about a foot in diameter and three inches tall.
Separately,
Doug, what's your opinion of programming the robot with the locations of the objects and home base? If that is too much prior knowledge, then how about the idea we discussed briefly: 
Sharing information between robots. Not swarming. Connected-vehicle kinda stuff. Results from a competitor's successful run (or at least success in finding stuff even if it isn't retrieved) would feed that competitor's next run and other cooperating competitors.
All the talk about AI makes me to look at using it to process the sonar instead of continuing to write my own geometry programs.
Best to you all,John Swindle
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