A biomimetic robotic platform to study flight specializations of bats
Abstract
Bats have long captured the imaginations of scientists and engineers with their unrivaled agility and maneuvering characteristics, achieved by functionally versatile dynamic wing conformations as well as more than 40 active and passive joints on the wings. Wing flexibility and complex wing kinematics not only bring a unique perspective to research in biology and aerial robotics but also pose substantial technological challenges for robot modeling, design, and control. We have created a fully self-contained, autonomous flying robot that weighs 93 grams, called Bat Bot (B2), to mimic such morphological properties of bat wings. Instead of using a large number of distributed control actuators, we implement highly stretchable silicone-based membrane wings that are controlled at a reduced number of dominant wing joints to best match the morphological characteristics of bat flight. First, the dominant degrees of freedom (DOFs) in the bat flight mechanism are identified and incorporated in B2's design by means of a series of mechanical constraints. These biologically meaningful DOFs include asynchronous and mediolateral movements of the armwings and dorsoventral movements of the legs. Second, the continuous surface and elastic properties of bat skin under wing morphing are realized by an ultrathin (56 micrometers) membranous skin that covers the skeleton of the morphing wings. We have successfully achieved autonomous flight of B2 using a series of virtual constraints to control the articulated, morphing wings.
Additional Information
© 2017 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. Submitted 20 October 2016. Accepted 13 January 2017. Published 1 February 2017. We thank the team of graduate and undergraduate students from the aerospace, electrical, computer, and mechanical engineering departments for their contribution in constructing the prototype of B2 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In particular, we are indebted to Ph.D. students X. Shi (for hardware developments), J. Hoff (for wing kinematic analysis), and S. U. Ahmed (for helping with flight experiments). We extend our appreciation to our collaborators S. Swartz, K. S. Breuer, and H. Vejdani at Brown University for helping us to better understand the key mechanisms of bat flight. Funding: This work was supported by NSF (grant 1427111). Author contributions: A.R., S.-J.C., and S.H. designed B2. A.R., S.-J.C., and S.H. designed control experiments, analyzed, and interpreted the data. A.R. constructed B2 and designed its controller with critical feedback from S.-J.C., and S.H. A.R. performed flight experiments. All authors prepared the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: Please contact S.-J.C. for data and other materials.Attached Files
Supplemental Material - 27/2.3.eaal2505.DC1/aal2505_Movie_S1.mp4
Supplemental Material - 27/2.3.eaal2505.DC1/aal2505_Movie_S2.mp4
Supplemental Material - 27/2.3.eaal2505.DC1/aal2505_Movie_S3.mp4
Supplemental Material - 27/2.3.eaal2505.DC1/aal2505_Movie_S4.mp4
Supplemental Material - 27/2.3.eaal2505.DC1/aal2505_Movie_S5.mp4
Supplemental Material - 27/2.3.eaal2505.DC1/aal2505_SM.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 73974
- DOI
- 10.1126/scirobotics.aal2505
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170201-201024724
- Created
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2017-02-02Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-11Created from EPrint's last_modified field