Training Future Daredevils
Using echolocation to better navigate the world as a blind or visually impaired person
Radar sense may not be limited to the Daredevil of Hell’s Kitchen anymore. Marvel’s favorite blind superhero has used echolocation to scale buildings, duck behind corners to avoid enemies, and take down criminals for many decades – but, in the real world, echolocation training is improving the spatial awareness and navigational skills of those with vision loss.
Lore Thaler and her team at Durham University, UK, have been investigating click-based active echolocation and have had excellent results from a 10-week training program Thaler devised. The follow-up surveys for visually impaired participants made the program’s success clear: 100 percent reported increased mobility and 83 percent have better independence and wellbeing.
Unlike Daredevil’s heightened sense, enhanced echolocation is mostly passive (relying on ambient noise from elsewhere); active echolocation involves spatial awareness from sounds made by the person (such as clicks, cane taps, or footsteps) – with click-based echolocation the most effective technique.
- LJ Norman et al., PLoS One, 16, e0252330 (2021). PMID: 34077457.
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