A robot Bat that can also walk on it's wings like a bat

Science & Fiction

2

DALER – A Vampire Bat Robot, Just As Helpful As A Batman

Written by: Christopher Jackson

2015/01/25 7:37 PM

DALER (Deployable Air-Land Exploration Robot) is a new robot designed to resemble a bat, which have the ability to walk and fly. The device was designed to be able to access different terrains, permitting the craft to carry out a wide range of search and rescue operations.

DALER is designed after vampire bats. Wings of the robot are built of fabric extended over a stretchy skeletal structure. This permits the limbs, known as whegs, to play the roles of both wings and legs.
Engineers trust that DALER can be utilized to fly over a territory to survey circumstances, after which the vehicle can land and stroll into zones not available to other robotic devices.
One of the difficulties confronting developers of a craft that can both fly and walk includes the surface area of wings. A bigger wing makes flying easier, however the material needs to be folded up, or generally stashed away, when walking mode starts, or the robot could stumble over its own particular wings. Wings of vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus) were the motivation for the folding mechanism used by DALER.
“To design the robot, the group needed to first assign the primary mode of locomotion – for this case flight, as the DALER will cover the longest distances this way. The wings were then adapted for walking, contemplating the need to not include additional weight when the DALER is in flight mode,” Linda Seward of NCCR Robotics wrote for Robohub.
Ludovic Daler of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, created the first version of DALER, reported in 2013.
“While numerous dual-locomotion systems already exist, the vast majority of these just put in specialized hardware for every locomotion technique utilized, (for example, wings and wheels), adding both infrastructure and weight to the general framework, and obstructing flight performance. Rather, DALER utilizes only one structure – the wing – to both walk and fly,” Daler and Hallie Siegel wrote in a press release for the original robot.
Wingerons are utilized to help control DALER amid flight and push the bio-inspired robot forward on the ground as they pivot. The configuration was focused around the wingtips of vampire bats.
The latest version of DALER can fly at rates of around 45mph in the air and about 2 ½ inches per second on the ground. While switching between modes, wings of the vehicle have the capacity to successfully fold and unfold — a capacity not present in the previous version.
One major advantage of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can also travel on ground is that the craft can reorient itself after landing, planning for takeoff. Landing fixed-wing UAVs in numerous regions can be harsh and are often preventing from taking off after its mission is finished. Further improvement of the DALER framework could permit the craft to land, conduct reconnaissance for the ground, adjust itself for a return flight, and take off.

The study is published in the Bioinspiration & Biomimetics journal.
end quote from:
http://geekinfinite.com/news/2015/01/daler-a-vampire-bat-robot-just-as-helpful-as-a-batman/