Fruit Bats Inspire Researchers To Design Flying Robots

Bats have the ability to flap their wings during their flight. This tendency of bats has inspired scientists to design flying robots known as “micro air vehicles”. Researchers from Virginia Tech studied the motion of wings in fruit bats and how they manipulate air around them to fly swiftly.

Mr. Danesh Tafti, a mechanical engineering professor and director of high performance computational fluid thermal science and engineering lab at Virginia Tech, shared his views by saying that the size and shapes of wings of fruit bats differs from one another depending on their evolutionary function. He also said that the ability of bats to distort their wings shape and size increase the downward force. According to him the reason why the bats can adjust themselves and change their way very quickly and efficiently is its agile structure.


According to their study, the fruit bats are able to increase the area by 30 percent to increase the force in downward motion and are also able to decrease the area as they flap upward. This technique can help scientists design robots that can fly swiftly with the use of this flapping motion. To replicate these movements, they took measurements of bats wings to analyse their motion and are now studying the movement of wings to make simple design for the robots. The biggest challenge they are facing is to see how the complex motion of bat can be converted into simpler motion in robots.


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