Title: Robotic bat mechanism design

Authors: De-Ming Kong; Li-Biao Zhang; Jing-Shan Zhao; Sudeep Kumar Singh

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China ' Guangdong Institute of Applied Biological Resources, 105 Xingang Road W., Guangzhou 510260, Guangdong, China ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

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.

Keywords: bat robot; mechanism synthesis; folding; unfolding; kinematics; flapping wing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMRS.2018.096300

International Journal of Mechanisms and Robotic Systems, 2018 Vol.4 No.4, pp.418 - 430

Received: 06 Feb 2018
Accepted: 01 Aug 2018
Published online: 22 Nov 2018 *

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