A research team at Boston University designed a “Batcopter” to study how bats manage to fly together but never collide. They’re testing it in the desert of southern Texas, where thousands of Brazilian free-tailed bats swarm from their caves to feed each night.
As Dr. John Baillieul, professor of mechanical engineering at Boston University, says, “Getting some understanding of how they’re positioned relative to one another and how they may change within the formation as they fly is an open question in biology and it’s also very interesting for people who are trying to engineer flight systems for swarms of unmanned aircraft.”
The data could be used to develop unmanned aircraft that can fly as a swarm while still anticipating and avoiding collisions.
Source: Wall Street Daily, Reuters