Minisymposium Presentation

Ray tracing offers powerful capabilities for simulating wave propagation in diverse scientific fields, including acoustics. This presentation focuses on its application to in-air acoustic simulations, furthering our understanding of biological echolocation (e.g., bats) and advancing the development of in-air 3D sonar arrays, associated signal processing, and robotic applications. Our work in this area has evolved over time, initially using simpler 2D intersection calculations and progressing towards ray tracing methods capable of handling 3D scenes. Simulating the complex pulse-echo interactions of sound waves within detailed dynamic environments, involving multiple bounces and material-dependent reflections, presents significant computational challenges for which we will discuss our transition towards using hardware-accelerated ray tracing GPUs. This direction provides the ability to simulate larger, more complex scenes with moving objects and unique acoustic surface properties. We will discuss how key domain-specific challenges are tackled, such as modeling diffraction, alongside the continued need to optimize ray traversal and reflection calculations for achieving desired simulation fidelity efficiently on parallel hardware. This simulation framework facilitates rapid prototyping and testing of bio-inspired sonar sensors and their applications, enhances our understanding of complex animal behaviors, and provides a valuable tool bridging computational physics, robotics, and bioacoustics.