His name is Bat Bot and he is the first robot bat . It has been designed by a team of scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the California Institute of Technology, Caltech (USA), whose intention was for the robot to emulate the movements of these mammals due to its flexible and unique shape flying, since the joints in bats’ wings exceed two dozen, which was quite an engineering challenge.
The prototype, weighing just 90 grams, would be ideal for use in disaster areas and in the delimitation of construction zones , such as monitoring the progress of the works from the air. In fact, paper co-author Seth Hutchinson says it would have been great to have had this flying robot when the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan occurred.
“Whenever I see bats spinning and landing on their stomachs , landing on places with such graceful movements and deformations, they hypnotize me,” explains Soon-Jo Chung, a professor of aerospace at the California Institute of Technology. The truth is that no other animal lands in this way.
The Bat Bot has 9 joints and measures around 8 inches from head to tail . Its wings, made of a silicone membrane, are super thin and extend around 15 feet. Its flexible flapping – up to 10 times per second – acts as a great power amplifier. It can glide, turn and descend, among other maneuvers.
Researchers need to add cameras , build more robot bats, and get permission from federal agencies for them to fly freely, but Hutchinson believes these bat bots could be up and running within 5 years.
The project had a cost of 1.5 million dollars and has been published in the journal Science Robotics.
