THE BIO BOTS

BAT KIT CRAZY

at flight is fiendishly complex, requiring a system of muscles, bones and joints that incorporate folding of the wings in every wingbeat. The force that bat wings generate comes from a strong but flexible covering of skin, as opposed to the rigid feathers used by birds. Basically, of all the flying beasts in the world, if you’re going to pick one to try to emulate, don’t pick a bat. Except that’s exactly what US researchers did when they created this robotic bat, dubbed ‘B2’, to help them understand bat flight. In an article published in the journal , they explain how they stretched a 56-micrometre-thick (one micrometre = one-thousandth of a millimetre), silicone-based skin over B2’s wings, enabling it “to morph its