THE ΒΙΟ BOTS

Bio-inspired robots that can fly like birds and creep like cockroaches are helping researchers to understand more about how animals move and behave

- HAYLEY BENNETT

BAT KIT CRAZY

Bat flight is fiendishly complex, requiring a system of muscles, bones and joints that incorporate folding of the wings in every wing beat. The force that bat wings generate comes from a strong but flexible covering of skin, as opposed to the rigid feathers used by birds. Basically, of all the flying beasts in the world, if you’re going to pick one to try to emulate, don’t pick a bat. Except that’s exactly what US researchers did when they created this robotic bat, dubbed ‘B2’, to help them understand bat flight. In an article published in the journal Science Robotics, they explain how they stretched a 56-micrometre thick (one micrometre = one-thousandth of a millimetre), silicone-based skin over B2’s wings, enabling it “to morph its articulated structure in mid-air without losing an effective and smooth aerodynamic surface”.

B2 can execute sharp diving manoeuvres and banking turns and, as well as providing a way to mimic and study the flight mechanisms of real bats, it may feed into the design of more agile flying robots of the future, helping us reach inaccessible places without sustaining damage or causing injury.

GET A GRIP

The idea for this perching robot came from Stanford University engineer William Roderick, who was looking for a way to make a positive impact on the environment using his background in robotics. “It struck me as I was watching birds perching and flying through a forest [that] if there were a robot that could act like a bird, that would unlock completely new ways to study the environment,” Roderick says.