Our story
Our story begins with a bachelor project ISENSE, where the the main task was to build an echolocation system for humans. Maybe you know that people can be quite efficient echolocators. If you do not believe me, you can check out Ben Underwood. If you wish to become a human echolocator you should learn how to click in a proper way and learn how to interpret echoes. Still you would not be as efficient as bats, because you cannot hear ultrasound. To explain it in one sentence: the shorter sound wave is used in echolochation, the better resolution you will get. That is the reason why we used an ultrasonic sender and ultrasonic microphones in our system. Our goal was to stretch the ultasonic signal in time, so it can be hearable for humans, but that is not the end. We wanted to scale the distance between the microphones in a such way that the echoes would be perceived directionally. It means that a person who is using ISENSE system could without previous training identify where are the objects that are reflecting sound. We also tested different ear designs in order to identify which one works best in practice. Our system worked quite well, but gave no information about the color. That is what directed us towards Colorophone.
This ear model had a codename "Yoda"
ISENSE prototype
One of the ear models which looks a bit like Quark from Star Wars...
ISENSE was designed as a modular system, which was easy to reconfigure