Robotic bat mechanism design

Abstract

This paper proposes a bat robot mechanism and investigates the kinematics of flying process. After observing the flight of bats for a long period of time and analysing its flying kinematics, a bionic robot was synthesised based on the bat structure to realise the deploying and flapping movements of the double membranous wings. With screw theory, the primary motion of the membranous wings was checked and six actuators were selected for controlling the flapping flight of the bat robot collaboratively. The structure is optimised by a bench test. A method is presented to measure the force output of the bat robot.