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Article published In:
Vocal Interactivity in-and-between Humans, Animals and Robots
Edited by Mohamed Chetouani, Elodie F. Briefer, Angela Dassow, Ricard Marxer, Roger K. Moore, Nicolas Obin and Dan Stowell
[Interaction Studies 24:1] 2023
► pp. 66–86

Full-duplex acoustic interaction system for cognitive experiments with cetaceans

ORCID logo | University of Zurich | ETH Zurich
 | Association Motonomy
ORCID logo | Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich
ORCID logo | University of Zurich | ETH Zurich
ORCID logo | MIT Media Lab | Northeastern University
Cetaceans show high cognitive abilities and strong social bonds. Their primary sensory modality to communicate and sense the environment is acoustics. Research on their echolocation and social vocalizations typically uses visual and tactile systems adapted from research on primates or birds. Such research would benefit from a purely acoustic communication system to better match their natural capabilities. We argue that a full duplex system, in which signals can flow in both directions simultaneously is essential for communication research. We designed and implemented a full duplex system to acoustically interact with cetaceans in the wild, featuring digital echo-suppression. We pilot tested the system in Arctic Norway and achieved an echo suppression of 18 dB. We discuss the limiting factors and how to improve the echo suppression further. The system enabled vocal interaction with the underwater acoustic scene by allowing experimenters to listen while producing sounds. We describe our motivations, then present our pilot deployment and give examples of initial explorative attempts to vocally interact with wild orcas and humpback whales.
Keywords: human–dolphin communication, self-interference cancellation, echo cancellation, killer-whale, orca, humpback whale, inter-species communication, animal communication, bioacoustics, underwater communication, animal cognition
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Interactive playback experiments (Figure 2A)
  • Phantom echo (Figure 2B)
  • Animal telecommunication (Figure 2C)
  • Human–Animal interaction (Figure 2D)
  • Pilot experiments
  • System
  • Field test
  • Results and discussion
    • Echo suppression performance
    • Human experience of underwater soundscape
    • Vocal interactions with orcas and humpbacks
  • Conclusion
  • Ethical statement
  • Acknowledgments
  • Author contributions
  • Conflict of interests
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 28 August 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.22039.ryc
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