EchoVision: Bat-Inspired Human Augmentation

• EchoVision is a prototypical design intervention within the MtHtHA framework that imparts bat-inspired echolocation to cultivate embodied eco-phenomenological awareness.
• It utilizes sensor substitution techniques with spatialized audio and haptic feedback to translate ultrasonic and infrared data into perceivable cues.
• The system enables users to navigate environments with altered sensory input, provoking reflection on human exceptionalism and fostering empathy toward nonhuman species.

EchoVision is a prototypical design intervention within the More-than-Human through Human Augmentation (MtHtHA, denoted ">HtH+") framework, specifically aimed at cultivating embodied, eco-phenomenological awareness by granting human participants a transient, bat-inspired echolocation capability. It is grounded in somaesthetic design and eco-somatics, repurposing human augmentation technologies away from solely human optimization towards facilitating direct, experiential engagement with nonhuman Umwelt—addressing the epistemic gap highlighted by Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?" and operationalizing multispecies "designing-with" through technology-mediated transformation of the human sensorium (Hu et al., 16 Nov 2025).

1. Motivation and Conceptual Foundations

EchoVision responds to the contemporary more-than-human design imperative, which urges designers to engage ecologically and ethically with nonhuman perceptions and agencies. The challenge is the inherent constraint of human phenomenal access to nonhuman lifeworlds, particularly those radically divergent from our own interfaces—exemplified by the bat's sonar-based environmental perception. EchoVision is conceptualized as an "augmented Umwelt approximation," leveraging technical means to approximate a first-person perspective on bat-like echolocation and modulating human perception in order to re-sensitize participants to pluriversal more-than-human presences and affordances (Hu et al., 16 Nov 2025). This approach rejects human exceptionalism, seeking instead to cultivate empathy and ecological awareness through immersive experience.

2. MtHtHA Design Principles Applied in EchoVision

EchoVision operationalizes the MtHtHA design principles for multispecies encounter via sensorium transformation:

• P1 Embodied Umwelt Approximation: Translation of bat ultrasound distance cues into human-perceptible feedback, enabling a form of embodied sonar navigation.
• P4 Somaesthetic Grounding: The learning protocol intentionally omits explicit verbal or visual explanation; participants discern spatial relationships by bodily engagement and reflect on altered perceptual patterns.
• P5 Productive Defamiliarization: Visual sense is constrained or subtracted, provoking discomfort and opening space for active somatic inquiry.
• P6 Sensory Constraint and Reprioritization: Dominant reliance on the augmented sense (sonar-derived feedback); vision is minimized to force multi-modal adaptation.
• P7 Cross-Modal Mapping: Ultrasonic/infrared echo return measurements are mapped onto sensory substitution interfaces (e.g., spatialized audio, haptic signals), analogous to echolocative cues.

This principled approach directs not only technical implementation but also experiential choreography, facilitating eco-phenomenological engagement and sensemaking beyond anthropocentric default modes.

3. Technical Implementation

EchoVision comprises hardware and software subsystems that jointly realize the augmented echolocation workflow:

Hardware

• Head-mounted display (XR Headset): Configured to suppress visual input and, optionally, render minimal environmental anchors (e.g., sparse point-clouds).
• Ultrasonic/infrared range-finding apparatus: Mounted to track head orientation and emit/receive distance measurements within a forward cone (typical range 0.2–5 m, FOV 30–70°).
• Sensory substitution interface: Spatialized bone-conduction headphones and/or vibrotactile actuators mounted around the head or chest, capable of modulating feedback amplitude, frequency, and lateralization.
• Embedded controller: Real-time acquisition and pre-processing of echo returns, signal mapping, and actuator drive.

Signal Processing

• Pre-Processing: Raw echo-return times $s_j(t)$, $j \in \{1..N_\text{directions}\}$, median-filtered over short temporal windows to reduce spurious outliers: $$\bar{s}_j(t) = \operatorname{median}\{s_j(t-1), s_j(t), s_j(t+1)\}$$.
• Mapping Function: For each azimuth $j$, feedback intensity and pitch are computed as a monotonic function of distance:

$$h_j(t) = A_\text{min} + (A_\text{max} - A_\text{min}) \exp[-\alpha \bar{s}_j(t)],$$

with calibration parameters chosen to match typical bat obstacle-distances to perceptible human feedback thresholds.

• Spatialization and Actuator Control: Feedback signals distribute in real time across actuators, exploiting dynamic binaural audio panning or lateralized tactile cues to encode obstacle directionality and proximity.

Calibration

Participants undergo assisted calibration, progressively approaching a reference obstacle and ranking subjective intensity or pitch at discrete distances. $\alpha$ is adjusted such that proximity feedback becomes robustly discriminable at critical navigation ranges, and cross-modal mapping is validated for rapid adaptation.

4. Interaction and User Experience

The experiential protocol is minimalistically structured:

• Onboarding: Participants equipped with headset and substitution interfaces enter a dimly lit environment. Instruction is strictly non-verbal: "Explore by listening and sensing."
• Exploration Task: Users navigate among obstacles (walls, objects, textured panels) with vision suppressed or occluded, relying solely on real-time feedback from the augmented echolocation system.
• Embodied Navigation and Reflection: Participants actively interrogate environmental structure through movement, pausing to reflect on the qualitative difference between "seeing by sound" and native visual orientation. Periods of productive defamiliarization are common, with participants reporting altered body awareness and strengthened attunement to spatial affordances invisible to vision.

A plausible implication is increased ecological sensitivity and empathy for nonhuman modes of perception, as post-experience interviews report heightened awareness and curiosity regarding the lifeworlds of bats and other sonar-dependent species (Hu et al., 16 Nov 2025).

5. Evaluation and Ecological Insights

EchoVision is not evaluated via conventional task performance metrics but instead through qualitative, ecological, and eco-phenomenological impact:

• Attunement Effects: The system induces reflection on human ocularcentrism and habitual environmental engagement; participants demonstrate noticeable shifts in sensemaking and often articulate obligations of care for nonhuman others.
• Productive Discomfort: Initial disorientation is common, but this discomfort catalyzes inquiry into one's own embodied responses and fosters multispecies empathy.
• Cross-Species Insights: EchoVision approximates (temporarily and incompletely) bat-like access to environmental affordances, granting a phenomenological window into nonhuman navigation and presence. Such interventions gesture toward a design paradigm where technological augmentation is reframed as ecological attunement.

6. Limitations and Open Challenges

EchoVision's constraints are inherent to all Umwelt-approximation initiatives:

• Phenomenal Gap: Human experience cannot directly access the full richness of bat sensorium or subjective worldmaking; at best, EchoVision approximates select aspects of echolocation.
• Signal Fidelity and Range: Ultrasonic/infrared sensors are limited by ambient noise, range, and resolution, and sensory substitution interfaces compress high-dimensional bat experience into few human-accessible channels.
• Calibration and Adaptation: Individual differences in head/ear anatomy, perceptual adaptation rates, and prior experience affect user engagement and feedback interpretation.

A plausible implication is that further refinement (e.g., increasing feedback dimensionality, combining with proprioceptive cues, using neural field representations as in NeuralFeels (Suresh et al., 2023)) could improve approximation of nonhuman Umwelt and ecological attunement. EchoVision thus serves as both a practical proof-of-concept and an eco-phenomenological provocation, inviting future work on multispecies design through human augmentation.