Dieter Vanderelst, PhD
Associate Professor University of Cincinnati Joint appointment in the departments of Biological Sciences Electrical Engineering & Computing Systems Mechanical & Materials Engineering
Echolocating bats face remarkable sensory challenges. Their sonar provides only sparse, delayed, and noisy information about the world — yet they navigate dense vegetation, track moving prey, and recognize objects in flight with ease. My research asks how this is possible: how do animals achieve intelligent, adaptive behavior despite severe sensory limitations?
To answer this, I study the sensorimotor foundations of behavior using bats as a model system. I build computational and robotic models of echolocation-based navigation, flight control, and foraging to uncover how perception and action are intertwined in natural systems. In parallel, I develop artificial sonar systems and methods to record echoes in real habitats, allowing us to reconstruct what environments “sound like” from a bat’s perspective.
More broadly, my work explores bio-inspired intelligence — using insights from animals to inform algorithms for perception, decision-making, and autonomy, and using robots to test ideas about natural cognition. This approach bridges biology, engineering, and psychology, uniting fieldwork, modeling, and machine learning to reveal how intelligent behavior emerges from the dynamic interaction between sensing and movement.