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...

[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

[IonOtter]

Actually, the "Bat Bomb" was a striking success.

The "bomb" was essentially a large casing, filled with a stack of "honeycombs". Inside each cell of the honeycomb was a Mexican Freetailed Bat carrying an incendiary device.

The bats were chilled to induce torpor, then fitted with the device. While still chilled, they were loaded into the honeycombs and the devices were armed by pulling the string through the top of each cell. The combs were then strung together and loaded into a casing.

The casing would be dropped over a city, and once it reached 4000 feet, a chute would deploy and the case would fall off. The honeycombs would then fall like an accordion, stretching out. Each bat would then be shaken out of their cells and onto the top of the bottom cell. The device is now armed.

This was actually deliberate, as it gave the bats time to warm up, get their bearings and fly off for shelter.

The intent was that the bats would fly toward homes and buildings, seeking shelter from the daylight. After 20 minutes, the incendiary device would ignite. And since most Japanese homes of the time were made from washi paper, wood and bamboo, the resulting fires would be catastrophic.

The concept worked perfectly, as the Army found out quite by accident. Here's a video. Advance to 6:25 for the "successful test"

Unfortunately for a few million Japanese, but fortunately for the bats, the program was canceled in lieu of the A-Bomb.

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.