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Bats Inspiring Future Micro Unmanned Aircraft
coondoggie writes "It's not the first time researchers have tried to emulate flapping as a way to fly aircraft, but US Air Force-funded researchers are now looking at how bats move to help them develop future micro-aircraft. According to these researchers, birds, bats, and insects have some highly varied mechanical properties that researchers have so far not utilized in engineering flight vehicles. The idea is to reproduce bat mechanics and develop technology could lead to small, remote controlled aircraft able to move in places where fixed-wing aircraft have a hard time — like the interiors of buildings, caves, or tunnels."
Typical Slashbot response. "Bah, this is so easy. In fact, it's so easy that I could do it myself if I wanted to. I just don't want to."
I think the lack of grace comes from their body weight compared to birds, which perhaps makes them more appropriate for copying when you want to load a microcraft down with cameras and transmitters etc. They seem to use their wings downward flap to pull their body up, then immediately start falling, unlike birds which are able to glide for some distance without significant loss of altitude.
Gliding is certainly graceful and efficient, but it's somewhat at odds with being able to stop, hover, and change course quickly. For maneuvering indoors or in caves or tunnels, gliding would be a lower priority than not crashing into things.
> It'll be like those HARM systems... That got defeated by people who'd stick a fork into
> a microwave's door interlock and then turn it on and point it up. $280,000 missile blows
> up $15 microwave. Very economical!
You go right ahead and rely on that to work. After all, people capable of designing effective anti-radiation missiles are obviously not capable of designing receivers that can classify different radiation sources.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Engineers have always looked to nature for design inspiration. It is an approach that has some famous failures, including a lot of early flight research that was erroneously based on bird's wings that pointed people in directions that were simply wrong for the technology of the day. It has also had some notable successes, most recently with those "sharkskin" swimsuits.
But the thing that is certain is that every time the routine use of natural inspiration is pointed out to anyone who is completely ignorant of all good engineering practise for the past few centuries, they will boldly announce that it is "new" and "surprising" that engineers would do any such a thing. Unfortunately this leads to journalism that misses everything interesting.
The research linked in the story may be interesting because of some of the details of the work, but the simple fact that they are using nature as an inspiration for engineering design, which is what the story focuses on, is neither new nor interesting.
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It's a good thing the FAA doesn't approve - certain areas of airspace are controlled (airport tower or otherwise), with good reason - aircraft. UAVs have to be designed to be controlled - so they'll need avionics to pick up the local tower, transponders for secondary radar, cameras pointed around to see traffic around them. And those are UAVs controlled by a ground station (who at least have a chance to talk with controllers). Make them autonomous and the fun really starts (what happens whey they accidentally get into wake turbulence from a nearby jet?).
Tiny UAVs are even more of a hazard - think bird strikes, except instead of a somewhat feathery lump of meat, you have metal, composites, electronics and fuel. I'm sure the folks at LAX would just love to have a jet suck one of those into their engines on takeoff or landing. Something the size of a Predator would at least have a chance of being seen by the pilot and hopefully avoided, but those tiny ones...