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N.C. State is developing a robotic bat
Aim is to make search vehicle to cover large areas, reach tiny spaces
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Published: July 12, 2009
RALEIGH
Robot bats? What sounds like a person's sci-fi nightmare could soon help those lost in the wilderness or trapped in a collapsed building.
N.C. State University researchers have constructed small robots that would use a bats extraordinary flight skills to get into small spaces other rescue equipment and personnel can't. The mechanical bats could search a large area for missing hikers or relay cell-phone signals to those who've lost their way, The Raleigh News and Observer reported yesterday.
The school's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering has worked on the project. Scientists there have built several prototypes of a bat's skeleton and properties of how bats fly.
Stefan Seelecke, an associate professor, oversees the robot bat project. He says the flying patterns of bats look haphazard, but they can change direction quickly and easily maneuver through tight places.
Seelecke said researchers are taking advantage of the work that nature has already done.
"There are about 900 kinds of bats," Seelecke said. "So there are plenty of different (flight) characteristics among them."
A computer shapes the cyberbat's body shells and some wing "bones" made of lightweight plastic. Other parts are made of an alloy of titanium and nickel that scientists say gives a full range of natural motion and returns to its original position.
For the robot's "muscle" to move the wings, scientists use smart-metal wire that's half the diameter of human hair. When it heats, the wire rearranges its atoms and shrinks instead of expanding as metals typical do. When it cools, it returns to its original position.
Seelecke says the robots are inexpensive to make and could be mass produced. Researchers expect to have a model that flaps its wings properly by the end of summer.
Next up is developing a small computerized control system and internal power source.
N.C. State's research will be presented at a national engineering conference in two months.
Replicating a bats' wing movement won't be easy.
Brown University researcher Daniel Riskin says a radio-controlled bat might need 20 controllers to influence all its movements.
Riskin says while there's much still unknown about the flight of bats, scientists see them offering lessons that could advance mechanical flight. And N.C. State's robot bats could help that understanding.
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