INTRODUCTION In humans, and other terrestrial animals, acoustic and non-acoustic detrimental effects of noise have been described long ago (1,2). In the recent years there is an increase in public and expert interest in the potential damaging consequences of acoustic pollution to marine life. The general increase in underwater noise and the use of sonar (1,2) have been associated with behaviora...

Given the limited range and applicability of visual imaging systems in the underwater environment, sonar has been the preferred solution for the observation of the seabed since its inception in the 1950s (Blondel 2002). The images produced by the most commonly used side-looking sonars (side-scan and, more recently, synthetic aperture sonars) contain information on the backscatter strength recor...

Echo-location is a broad approach to imaging and sensing that includes both man-made RADAR, LIDAR, SONAR also animal navigation. However, full 3D information based on echo-location requires some form of scanning the scene in order provide spatial location echo origin-points. Without this information, objects very challenging task as inverse retrieval problem strongly ill-posed. Here, we show te...

Echolocation operates through adaptive sensorimotor systems that collectively enable the bat to localize and track sonar objects as it flies. The features of sonar signals used by a bat to probe its surroundings determine the information available to its acoustic imaging system. In turn, the bat's perception of a complex scene guides its active adjustments in the features of subsequent sonar vo...

A submarine's sonar team is responsible for detecting, localising and classifying targets using information provided by the platform's sensor suite. The information used to make these assessments is typically uncertain and/or incomplete and is likely to require a measure of confidence in its reliability. Moreover, improvements in sensor and communication technology are resulting in increased am...