Bats offer clues to unmanned travel

[Wayne Harrison]

Bats offer clues to unmanned travel
Friday, May 11, 2007
Bats may offer a template for the way future generations of unmanned aircraft are designed.

Only now have experts began to understand how they fly – and it is completely different to birds.

<a href="http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=48653&in_page_id=34">Full Story</a>

[Cheryl Jones]

Future Bat-Tech for Bots
DefenseRech.org

They’re an enigma of flight. Rats with wings that guide themselves through the air with chirps and clicks. And now the Air Force is taking notice to see how the mysteries of a bat’s ability to fly can help make better aircraft in the future.

The Boston Globe’s Bryan Bender has an outstanding piece today on a $6 million research program at Brown University intended to uncover the mechanics and science of chiroptera flight for human (or robotic) applications......

.....If researchers can unlock the secrets of bat flight, it could have wide-reaching implications, according to Air Force and Brown officials. They say the project has the potential to revolutionize aircraft design and could lead to the creation of smaller, more efficient military air vehicles that can maneuver in tight spaces as well as gather intelligence and airlift supplies through forbidding terrain.

Read on....Interesting stuff!
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003587.html