RoboBat Just The Thing To Take Care Of Those Pesky RoboInsects
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Wednesday, 8 of July , 2009 at 2:38 am
Worried about hostile micro air vehicles landing on you and exploding? Yeah, me too. One way to solve the problem would be a robotic bat, like this one being developed by Gheorghe Bunget from North Carolina State University. They’re taking all of their cues from a real bat, for reasons we’re very familiar with: “We are trying to mimic nature as closely as possible,” [ Bunget's advisor, Dr. Stefan Seelecke ] says, “because it is very efficient. And, at the MAV scale, nature tells us that flapping flight – like that of the bat – is the most effective.”
The skeleton of BatMAV (as it’s called) was created on a rapid prototyping machine, but most of the focus is going into the joints and muscles. Shape memory alloys are the key here: a super bendy one that “remembers” its original position is being used for joints. For muscles, a thin shape memory metal strand that contracts when heated duplicates the real thing, with the added advantage that the material changes its resistance as it contracts, providing a basic motor feedback system.
Of course, it’s easy enough to conceptualize such a system, and quite another matter to actually construct one. The skeleton is the easy part. Heck, hooking up the joints and muscles is probably (relatively) the easy part, too. The hard part is going to be to get BatMAV to flap its wings in a controllable manner while also developing enough thrust to achieve liftoff, to say nothing of carrying on-board power and a relevant payload. But I’m not worried: if they can make a robot hummingbird, a robot bat can’t be far behind.
[ BatMAV Thesis (PDF) ] VIA [ Physorg ]
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Category: Biorobotics, Research
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