Batman's got some competition. Flying robots inspired by bats may be the next technology to take to the air.
Researchers are looking at the way bats move their wings, in order to design a new series of "micro air vehicles."
The study, conducted by Virginia Tech, looked at the way air flows around the wings of a bat.
"Bats have different wing shapes and sizes, depending on their evolutionary function. Typically, bats are very agile and can change their flight path very quickly - showing high maneuverability for midflight prey capture, so it's of interest to know how they do this," Danesh Tafti, from Virginia Tech, said.
Hand membrane wings, which possess webbing between fingers, are found in 1,000 species of bat. Researchers found the bats continuously altered the shape of their wings in order to maximize lift. This includes increasing the area of the wing by up to 30 percent while it is coming down during flapping. On the way back up, surface area is reduced, to minimize friction. This effect was found to be two to three times greater for bats than for commercial aircraft.
Researchers studied both air resistance over the wing, as well as how whirlpools are created as the body part moves during flight. Bats are the only mammal capable of sustained flight. So-called flying squirrels just glide through the air, although for quite a distance. Anatomically, body parts controlling the flight of bats is far different than for birds.
"The intricate functional mechanics and architecture of the bat wings set it apart from other vertebrate flight... From the obtained data, the bat exhibits fine control of its mechanics by actively varying wing camber, wing area, torsional rotation of the wing, forward and backward translational sweep of the wing, and wing conformation to dictate the fluid dynamics," researchers wrote in the study.
The next step in the study will involve analyzing each step of the movement bats make as they fly. By doing this, Tafti and his team hope to be able to build robots that will possess many of the flight capabilities as bats. Such robots could fly into tight areas where humans would not be safe. These could include nuclear reactors in the middle of meltdowns. In the event of a building collapse, these small, agile devices will be able to easily fly among debris to recognize and identify survivors. These quick, unobtrusive flying machines could even be used during sporting events, allowing viewers a look at the game from the perspective of a player.
Details of the bat wing study have been reported in the journal Physics of Fluids.
