Hello Steemians,

After quite a while, I am here with a new bot...... Its a Bat Bot. Don't worry its not a usual bot from steem and as the name suggests its neither from the Batman or from the Wayne foundation, Its actually created by the a research team at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Coordinated Science Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology.

Source

So, the world of robotics always has something new for you and this time this research group is up with a robot which looks like a bat and fly like a bat and its obvious to name it a Bat Bot.

The whole body is made up of carbon-fiber and the feather parts were made of silicone membrane and head contains of sensors and on-board computer and micro-sized motors attached to its backbones, that make the body weighs around 3.3 ounce which helps it flap and fly autonomously. The designed robot was published in Science robotics.

link

What makes it so special is just how it replicates the flying mechanism of original bats, as it was really hard to mimic the same flying actions.

Bats would named themselves as wing pilot if flying was an art form. Because with each flap it uses 40 active and passive joints, with the flexible membranes of their wings - says Chung.

Chung group first thought to make the flapping bat wings and during the time period they realized it was a sort of impossible to have all the 40 joints in the robot design and if any how they add all it will be only a heavy metal piece, which can never fly. So, to overcome this problem they collaborated with a biologist Dan Riskin who is a Discovery Channel host and they came out with the decision of which of them are absolutely vital.

Chung, 2017, Sci. Robotics, 2(3)

And then the resultant bot has a total of nine joints only. So, by removing these joints from the bot will not let it do all the same functions just like the natural one but yeah it can fly. The flight of bat bot through the air looks quite similar to the natural bat it can be distinguished only if are a biologist.

Being lightweight bot it doesn't requires remote controlling, with the sensors and computers it can autonomously fly, glide and even take sharp turns.

Well, the bot is still can not perform some of the flight mechanism which a natural can do and Chang is working to overcome this issue.

Why Bat

Wikimedia commons

Bats have the most sophisticated powered mechanism of flying among animals.

The flying mechanism of bat involves several joints, ball and sockets which take part in the flying. As in insects, they have just a single joined and are not attached to the limbs while birds have more joints attached to it and are able to give the whole body flight independently. In the world of Robotics, the birds wings were already built but the study of bats wing, opens up another insight of flying.

Autonomously flying Microbots

Wyss Institute have designed a microbots which is inspired from bees and they named it Robobees, a man made system which help in pollination and also can be used in search missions.

The Idea of these Robobees was to develop an autonomous micro-aerial vehicle which are capable of self-contained and self-directed flight and work in large group. So, the RoboBee development is broadly divided into three main component: body, brain and colony. The Brain as usual contains the sensors and controls the electronics of antennae and eye.

Credit: Wyss Institute at Harvard University

Well, there are many more animal inspired robotics developed by the scientists and will be discussing more about them later.

Well, there are many more animal inspired robotics developed by the scientists and will be discussing more about them later.

References

Ramezani et. at., 2017 A biomimetic robotic platform to study flight specializations of bats. 2(3)

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