Echolocation is the prime sensing modality for many species of bats, who show the intricate ability to perform a plethora of tasks in complex and unstructured environments. Understanding this exceptional feat of sensorimotor interaction is a key aspect into building more robust and performant man-made sonar sensors. In order to better understand the underlying perception mechanisms it is important to get a good insight into the nature of the reflected signals that the bat perceives. While ensonification experiments are in important way to better understand the nature of these signals, they are as time-consuming to perform as they are informative. In this paper we present SonoTraceLab, an open-source software package for simulating both technical as well as biological sonar systems in complex scenes. Using simulation approaches can drastically increase insights into the nature of biological echolocation systems, while reducing the time- and material complexity of performing them.

翻译：回声定位是许多蝙蝠物种的主要感知方式，它们展现出在复杂非结构化环境中执行多种任务的精巧能力。理解这种卓越的感觉运动交互机制，是构建更稳健、更高效的人造声纳传感器的关键。为更深入地理解其潜在感知机制，需充分了解蝙蝠所感知的反射信号特性。尽管声波照射实验是理解这些信号特性的重要途径，但其耗时性与信息获取价值同样突出。本文提出SonoTraceLab——一款用于模拟复杂场景中技术声纳与生物声纳系统的开源软件包。采用仿真方法可显著提升对生物回声定位系统特性的认知，同时降低实验的时间成本与材料复杂度。