Robotic Bat Wing Unlocks Secrets of Flight -- Batman Would be Thrilled (Video)

Batman would no doubt be thrilled--bats could help scientists design small aircraft and better understand the process of flight. Researchers have built a robotic bat wing that can record crucial data about the aerodynamic forces that make up flying.

The bat wing, which was developed by researchers at Brown University, has provided valuable information about the dynamics of flapping flight. The robot itself mimics the wing shape and motion of the lesser dog-faced fruit bat. The eight-inch creation possesses plastic bones carefully fabricated on a 3-D printer to match the proportions of a real bat. The highly elastic "skin" in between the bones is made out of a silicone elastomer. It's designed to flap while attached to a force transducer in a wind tunnel. While it flaps, the force transducer actually records the aerodynamic forces that are generated by the moving wing. In this way, researchers can scientifically process the physics that go into a bat's flight.

After testing the wing in the wind tunnel, the researchers found that the robot could match the basic flight parameters of bats. It could produce enough thrust to overcome drag, and enough lift to carry the weight of the model species. So what does that mean for aircraft flight?

The fake wing produced data that could have never been collected with live animals, since bats can't fly when connected to instruments that record aerodynamic forces directly. It helped answer questions that included whether or not increasing wing beat frequency improves lift and what the energetic cost is of increasing wing beat. The findings could allow scientists to eventually design small aircraft based on these bat wings.

Yet the researchers aren't done testing. They hope to start playing with the materials that make up the bat wing and examine if there are any beneficial tradeoffs in the material properties.

The findings are published in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics.

Want to see the bat in flight? Check out the video below, courtesy of Brown University.