Researchers at Brown University have created a robotic bat wing, which they hope will be an important step towards developing small bat-like aircraft for reconnaissance missions.
The robotic wing is based on that of the dog-faced fruit bat and flaps while being attached to a force transducer in a wind tunnel. The transducer thereby records the aerodynamic forces that the wing generates. This allows the researchers to determine things like the amount of energy needed for wing movement.
"A lot of my interest in bat flight is in understanding how they fly and in particular how their wing motion influences their aerodynamic force generation," Brown University graduate student and project lead Joseph Bahlman told NBC News.
The difficulty with studying a live bat is that they are difficult to control in a lab setting.
"The solution to that was to build a robotic bat wing that I can then systematically control the motion parameters," Bahlman said.
The study itself has not yet revealed much information, however testing has indicated that an upward folding of the wing, as conducted by live bats, results in an increase of net lift by 50 percent. A paper about the robotic wing can now be found in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.
The team of researchers did run into some snags during testing of the wing. The joint located at the robot's elbow continually ripped, prompting the researchers to wrap it with steel cable. Real bats have large muscles at the elbow, which prevent breaking of the joint. In the future the researchers hope to test a variety of wing materials, in hopes of optimizing the wing's performance.
Development of the robotic wing may hold important repercussions for the creation of small reconnaissance aircraft that would use flapping wings. "Things that are a foot, foot and a half wingspan that you can send into places that aren't safe for people like abandoned mine shafts or to inspect weak spots around bridges," Bahlman said.
