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."

Comments

Re:Not to knock bats...

[jrumney]

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.

Re:Not to knock bats...

[Cousin Scuzzy]

They may appear less graceful, but bats have greater control over their flight then birds. From Wikipedia:

Because their wings are much thinner than those of birds, bats can maneuver more quickly and more precisely than birds.

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.

Re:Not a new model

[radtea]

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.